A SURVEY OF

OLD TESTAMENT
INTRODUCTION

By GLEASON ARCHER, JR.

MOODY PRESS
CHICAGO

Copyright 1964, 1974, 1994 by

The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago
Updated and Revised Edition
Paperback Edition, 1985, 1994
ISBN: 0–8024-8200–7
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles of reviews.
The use of selected references from various versions of the Bible in this publication
does not necessarily imply publisher endorsement of the versions in their entirety.

TO
My wife, Sandra
 CONTENTS

Prefaces
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. The Inspiration of the Old Testament

PART ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

3. The Hebrew Manuscripts and the Early Versions

4. Lower Criticism of the Old Testament
5. The Canon of the Old Testament
6. History of the Documentary Theory of the Pentateuch
7. Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century
8. The Authorship of the Pentateuch
9. Variations and Doublets as Criteria for Source Division
10. Late Words and Aramaisms as Criteria for Source Division
11. Wellhausen’s Reconstruction of Hebrew History in the Preprophetic and Prophetic Periods
12. Wellhausen’s Reconstruction of Hebrew History in the Priestly Period
13. Archaeological Evidence for the Antiquity of the Pentateuch

PART TWO: SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

14. Genesis
15. Genesis (Continued)
16. Exodus
17. Leviticus and Numbers
18. Deuteronomy
19. Joshua, Judges, and Ruth
20. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings
21. Introduction to the Prophets; Obadiah, Joel, and Jonah
22. Amos, Hosea, and Micah
23. Isaiah
24. Isaiah (Continued)
25. Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk
26. Jeremiah and Lamentations
27. Ezekiel
28. Daniel
29. Daniel (Continued)
30. Post-exilic Historical Books: 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
31. Post-exilic Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
32. Introduction to Hebrew Poetry
33. Psalms
34. The Books of Wisdom: Job and Proverbs
35. Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon
Appendix 1: Old Testament Chronology
Appendix 2: Anachronisms and Historical Inaccuracies in the Koran
Appendix 3: Anachronisms and Historical Inaccuracies in the Mormon Scriptures
Appendix 4: Inventory of the Biblical Manuscripts from the Dead Sea Caves
Excursus 1
Excursus 2
Excursus 3
Selected Bibliography

Preface to First Edition

The purpose of this Survey of Old Testament Introduction is to furnish a simple and usable text
for the instruction of college and seminary students who have had no previous training in Old
Testament criticism. It is also designed to provide a general discussion of the field for ministers
and other serious Bible students. Due to the necessity of conserving space, the author has made
no attempt to discuss all the most recent books and articles in this field, but rather has contented
himself with developing the most representative and influential views of the acknowledged
leaders in the study of Old Testament introduction. An attempt has been made in the interest of
clarity to confine the discussion to the main issues and to handle those issues in a way which the
novice can understand and appreciate.
The reader will find that this book adheres to a consistently conservative or evangelical
viewpoint. For this the author makes no apology, except to say that it is his personal conviction
that only the orthodox view of the Bible does real justice to the testimony of the biblical text
itself and truly squares with the evidence presented by all the relevant data. At the same time a
consistent effort has been made to deal fairly with the differing views and theories of those
adhering to a liberal or neoorthodox position, and to present their premises and conclusions in a
way to be readily comprehended and fairly appraised by the reader.

Preface to Second Edition

No major changes have been introduced into this new edition, but an effort has been made to
correct typographical errors or to clarify obscure wording here and there where ambiguities have
been noted. Certain chapters have been amplified, however, and a few portions (notably in chap.
20) have been deleted in order to make way for an improved treatment of the subject matter. A
selective use has been made of some of the more recent works dealing with Old Testament
criticism which have appeared since 1963. I wish to express thanks to the many students and
readers of the first edition who have contributed suggestions for the improvement of this volume.
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfleld, Illinois
September, 1973

Preface to Third Edition

After nearly three decades this Survey of Old Testament Introduction has proved to be helpful to
many thousands of Bible students who train for ministry in the Lord’s service, and who are in
need of being adequately equipped to deal with the issues of authentic divine authority and
inspiration involved in the Hebrew-Aramaic Scriptures of the Old Testament. When the first
edition became available in 1965 there was little indication that it would become so widely used
over so long a period of time as has proved to be the case. In 1974 a second edition proved to be
timely, especially in view of increasing archaeological discoveries emanating from the Qumran
Caves and Tell Mardikh. These two editions have been translated into Italian, Portuguese,
French, Chinese, Spanish, Korean and German, and are widely used all over the world in the
preparation of pastors and Bible teachers on every continent of our globe. For this totally
unexpected distribution of a fairly technical piece of scholarship we can only give God the glory.
It is now time to prepare an updated third edition of this work in order to inform a new
generation of Bible students that the Bible continues to be demonstrable as the trustworthy and
inerrant Word of God, despite all of the efforts of modern skeptics to undermine its credibility as
authentic revelation from God. By any fair examination of the data which it contains, employing
the rules of legal evidence and avoiding the pitfalls of humanistic subjectivism and circular
reasoning, it is abundantly apparent that this most influential book in all of human history can
only be understood by any unbiased investigator as being the inerrant revelation from God that
Jesus of Nazareth affirmed to be the true status of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Most of the additional material in this third edition deals with more recent approaches and
variations in modern Liberal scholarship of the twentieth century, in order that evangelical
workers may be acquainted with the most prominent leaders in the antisupernaturalist camp, and
come to terms with the radical biases of those who would appear to be learned scholars and
therefore worthy of credence. This edition of our work will serve to bring out the basic fallacies
of their attacks upon God’s Word, and reassure the Church of the supernatural and utterly
trustworthy authority of the Holy Scriptures. In addition we should point out that a good number
of illustrations, maps and charts have been added in order to enhance the interest and usefulness
of this work.
We can only rejoice in the amazing upsurge of evangelical scholarship that has taken place in
some of the largest conservative training schools in our country since the first edition came upon
the scene. We are looking for continued growth in the spread of the Gospel all over Planet Earth
in these coming decades before the Lord returns. And we give Him all the glory for the
multiplied thousands of Bible-believing pastors, missionaries and congregations who are
preparing the way for His coming again. To this end the Third Edition of Survey of Old
Testament Introduction is humbly and sincerely dedicated.
In closing I wish to express profound appreciation for the encouragement and assistance of Dr.
Gary Hill, general editor of The Discovery Bible project, and the valued coworkers who have
made possible the production of this enlarged addition. Notably and most especially, Mrs. Vicki
Westerhoff has served as my manager and proofreader week by week and has made it possible
for me to complete the project by the appointed deadline. Bernie Burke deserves the credit for
the design and production of the book, Daniel Hill has managed the computerized photography,
and Tom Volpert served as the D.I.G.A.R. specialist. For them all I give God the thanks and the
glory for the achievement of this new format and all of its helpful pictorial additions.
Gleason L. Archer
Feb. 1994

Abbreviations
A Codex Alexandrinus
AB Archaeology and the Bible, G. A. Barton
ABH Archaeology and Bible History, Joseph P. Free
ALQ Ancient Library of Qumran. E M. Cross
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts, J. B. Pritchard ( ed.)
AOT Archaeology and the Old Testament, M. F. Unger
AOOT Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, K. A. Kitchen
AP The Archaeology of Palestine, W. E. Albright
ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research
ASV American Standard Version
B Codex Vaticanus
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BAM Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, Frederic Kenyon
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BDB Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CD Damascus Document (from Cairo Genizah)
CSS Companion to Scripture Studies, J. E. Steinmueller
CT Christianity Today
CVSS The Christian Review of Science and Scripture, B. Ramm
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan
DSPS The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll, J. A. Sanders
DSS Dead Sea Scrolls, Millar Burrows
EA Die El-Amama Tafeln, J. Knudtzon
EBD Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, G. L. Archer
EG Wortherbuch Der AEgyptischen Sprache
FBM The Five Books of Moses, O.T. Allis
GATE Grundriss fur Alttestamentliche Einleitung, Wilhelm Moeller
IBOT Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament, W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H.
Robinson
ICC International Critical Commentary
IDB Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
IGOT Introductory Guide to the Old Testament, M. E. Unger
ILOT Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, S. R. Driver
IOT Introduction to the Old Testament
ISBE International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
JAOS Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
JTC Journal for Theology and Church
KJV King James Version
LAP Light from the Ancient Past, J. Finegan
LXX Septuagint Version of the Old Testament
MLDSS More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Millar Burrows
MT Masoretic Text of the Old Testament (Hebrew)
NASB New American Standard Bible
OHH An Outline of Hebrew History, J. B. Payne
OTI Old Testament Introduction, John H. Raven
OTMS Old Testament and Modern Study, H. H. Rowley
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
POT The Problem of the Old Testament, James Orr
PTR Presbyterian Theological Review
QHBT Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text, E. Cross and S. Talmon
RB Revue Biblique
RQ Revue de Qumran
RSV Revised Standard Version
SAC From the Stone Age to Christianity, W. E Albright
SIOT Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Robert Dick Wilson
SIP Short Introduction to the Pentateuch, G. C. Aalders
SWDS Scrolls from the Wilderness of the Dead Sea, (Smithsonian Exhibit Catalogue,
American Schools of Oriental Research, 1965)
TAT Der Text Des Alten Testaments, E. Wurthwein
TOT Text of the Old Testament, E. Wurthwein
VAB Vorasiatische Bibliothek
VT Vetus Testamentum
1QS First Qumran Cave Serekh or Rule of the Congregation

1
Introduction

The Purpose of the Bible

THE HOLY BIBLE is like no other book in all the world. It is the only book which presents itself
as the written revelation of the one true God, intended for the salvation of man, and
demonstrating its divine authority by many infallible proofs. Other religious documents, such as
the Muslim Koran, may claim to be the very word of God, but they contain no such self-
authenticating proofs as does the Bible (e.g., the phenomena of fulfilled prophecy). As the record
of God’s holy will for man, the Bible is of utmost importance to understand aright the true
meaning of the revelations it contains. It will not do to construe the words of Scripture as if they
were given in our modern age and addressed to present-day English-speaking peoples facing
twentieth-century problems. To be sure, the Bible does convey God’s message to us today, and is
as relevant to us as it was to the Hebrews of ancient times. But the form in which that message
was given was an ancient Hebrew form, and it was in the first instance addressed to people who
faced the special issues and circumstances peculiar to their own day and age. We cannot properly
understand the underlying and permanent principles contained in these ancient utterances of God
unless we first of all take stock of the problems and challenges that confronted His people in the
generation in which He spoke to them.
The Holy Bible comes to us as a set of directions, right from the hand of the Manufacturer who
first invented and produced the human race. For any piece of machinery a purchaser must consult
diligently every word of instruction as to how to put the machine or contrivance together, or else
his result will be frustration and disaster. For such a marvelously constructed creation as man
with all of his spiritual and material components, the need of an authoritative book of directions
is utterly necessary. Why are we here on Planet Earth? What makes us different from other
biological species, and what is the purpose of our existence?
Basically there are two possible answers to this question, as set forth in the third chapter of
Genesis, where Adam and Eve have enjoyed an ideal setting of safety and plenty in happy
fellowship with the God who created them to be His children, engaged in His service and
committed to His glory. The clear and evident purpose of their existence was to glorify God and
enjoy Him forever. But since they were moral agents possessing a free will, it was necessary for
them to be faced with an alternative purpose of life. This was persuasively presented to them by
the serpentine agent of Satan, who suggested that God did not really love them for their own
sakes and only wished to exploit them by forbidding access to the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. The Lord was accused of depriving of them of their basic right, which was to
seek their own interests and assert their own just prerogatives. The life proposed by Satan was to
live for themselves, to seek their own happiness and ascend to a godlike knowledge of good and
evil. When Eve accepted this ego-centered principle for her life’s purpose and persuaded Adam
to join with her in this stand against God and His holy will, the love relationship between God
and man was interrupted and profoundly altered by the Fall.
God had to seek Adam and Eve out as they vainly tried to hide in the bushes from His gaze and
then direct them to confession and repentance, followed by expelling them from Eden, and
subjecting them to labor and pain as they shifted to the more hostile environment of the world
outside. But He was able to counter the triumph of Satan by the plan of redemption which was
first intimated to Eve in Gen. 3:15, to declare to them that a messianic descendant of the woman
would some day crush the head of the Satanic serpent and pay full atonement for their sin upon
the altar of sacrifice. The skins with which their naked bodies were covered came from animals
who had been slain, and Abel’s later offering of a sheep upon the altar indicates quite clearly that
Adam’s family believed in and looked forward to, the redemption which the Lord Jesus achieved
for them and all of their believing descendants upon the Hill of Calvary.
Sophisticated modern scholarship may dismiss this record in Genesis as childish myth, but the
fact still remains that the two alternatives set before Eve must be chosen and answered by every
member of the human race. Either we human beings are created for loving fellowship with God
with the purpose of living for His glory, or else we replace Him with our own ego as the highest
value in life. There is no other eligible choice left to us, for even a dedication to the welfare of
others or of mankind or society in general can be valid only if we have indeed as a human race
been given a special value as children of God. No such value is capable of confirmation or proof,
once the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible has been rejected. Those who put themselves
above God as the most important person in the universe become guilty of moral insanity and take
no more benefit from the Book of directions which comes to us in the Holy Bible.
It should also be pointed out that modern intelligentsia who assert a knowledge of the purpose of
life (intelligent self-interest) which surpasses that of the prophets and apostles of old, and of the
Lord Jesus Himself, put themselves in a very awkward fideistic position. The Scripture confronts
them with a pattern of prediction and fulfillment which is completely beyond mere human
ability. None of us really knows what the future may bring; even the events of the morrow are
hidden from us day by day. But the Bible is replete with short-range and long-range predictions
that could not possibly have been foreknown by man apart from the inspiration of God. A
selection of these predictions will be found in Excursus 1 at the end of this book. Suffice it to say
that this evidence is so clear and irrefutable that no thinker can honestly say that he is
intellectually respectable if he rejects the divine inspiration of the Holy Bible.

The Scope of Introduction

Old Testament introduction is the term applied to a systematic study of the ancient background
against which the first thirty-nine books of the Bible are to be properly understood. It deals with
matters of language, custom, historical situations, persons, places, and events alluded to in the
various books of the Bible. In its larger scope it includes the following branches of study:
1. The languages in which the Old Testament was originally written, that is, Hebrew and
Aramaic, along with those related Semitic languages (such as Arabic, Assyrian, Phoenician,
Ugaritic, and Syriac) which help us understand the meaning of the words used in the biblical
text.
2. The history of the Hebrew people and of those neighboring countries with which they had
contact.
3. The religion and culture of these non-Hebrew nations, as they are revealed to us by ancient
pagan authors and by the discoveries of modern archaeology.
4. The authorship of the several books of the Bible, since the question of who wrote the book has
an important bearing upon its meaning and its reliability.
5. The date, or at least the approximate time, when each book was composed—since this often
gives a clue as to what issues were confronting God’s people when He spoke to them.
6. The historical situation and contemporary problems to which the inspired authors addressed
themselves as spokesmen for God.
7. The original text of each book as it existed before slips of the pen or other copyists’ errors may
have crept into the form of the text which has been preserved to us. (This is known as textual
criticism.)
8. The integrity of the text, that is, the question of whether each book was entirely written by the
author claimed for it, or whether the writings of others have been combined with it.
9. The history of the transmission of the text, that is, the way in which each book was copied and
handed on in the various manuscript families, and translated into the various ancient languages
of the peoples to whom Judaism and Christianity came during subsequent centuries, until finally
the Hebrew text itself (and its various translations into Greek, Latin, Syriac, etc.) was put into
printed form after the invention of the printing press.
As a general rule, the first three divisions of introduction described above are dealt with in
separate courses in language or history, while Old Testament introduction as an academic subject
is restricted to the last six divisions. Furthermore, within introduction itself there are two main
subdivisions: general introduction and special introduction.

CLASSIFICATION OF
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
(According to Geographic Location)

East Semitic South Semitic Northwest Semitic

Primary Akkadian Arabic Canaanite Aramaic

Dialects Babylonian North Arabic Eblaic Old Aramaic

Assyrian South Arabic Ugaritic Biblical Aramaic
Minean Phoenician Imperial Aramaic
Hadramautian Hebrew Nabataean
Qatabanean Ammonite Syriac
Ethiopic Moabite
Amharic

General introduction deals with matters of the text (both in the original language in which it was
composed and in the early versions into which it was first translated). It also considers the canon,
that is, the question of which books are truly inspired and authoritative, and the approximate
period in history when they were so recognized by the people of God. It gives an account of the
origin and extent of the canon and the arrangement and preservation of the books that comprises
it. Since the question of the date and authorship of the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses) is so
deeply involved with the theory of the canon, it is usually included in the field of general
introduction.
As for special introduction, it treats the individual books of the Old Testament one by one,
giving an account of authorship, date, purpose, and integrity. It may also discuss the overall
structure and basic message of each book, although a detailed treatment of its contents belongs
more properly to a course in Bible survey than in introduction.
 The Relationship of the Old Testament to the New

The New Testament authors regarded the books of the Old Testament (the Law and the Prophets)
as a single composite whole (the Scripture), ultimately authored by God Himself, although
mediated through human authors who wrote down His truth under His infallible guidance (cf.
Gal. 3:8; 2 Peter 1:20). The inspired apostles regarded the intention of the divine Author of the
Hebrew Scriptures as the important thing; the intent of the human author was a merely
subordinate matter. It could even happen that the human author of the Old Testament prophecy
did not understand the full significance of what he was writing, although his actual words
expressed the purpose of the divine Author who inspired him (see 1 Peter 1:10–11). The New
Testament writers viewed the entire Hebrew Scriptures as a testimony to Jesus Christ, the perfect
Man who fulfilled all the law; the Sacrifice and High Priest of the ritual ordinances; the Prophet,
Priest, and King of whom the prophets foretold; and the Lover whom the poetical books
described. They saw prophetic significance even in the historical events of the Old Testament
record. Thus the crossing of the Red Sea prefigured Christian baptism (1 Cor. 10:1–2); Joshua’s
conquest of Canaan prefigured the spiritual rest into which Christians enter by faith (Heb. 3–4);
and the calling of Israel out of Egypt foreshadowed the experience of the child Jesus (Matt.
2:15).
In general we may say that the Old Testament presented the preparation of which the New
Testament was the fulfillment; it was the seed and plant of which the New Testament was the
glorious fruit. Precisely because Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled what the Old Testament predicted,
His life and deeds possessed absolute finality, rather than His being a mere religious sage like
many others. For this reason also, the Gospel of Christ possesses divine validity which sets it
apart from all man-made religions. The Old Testament demonstrates that Jesus and His Church
were providential, the embodiment of the purpose of God; the New Testament proves that the
Hebrew Scriptures constituted a coherent and integrated organism, focused upon a single great
theme and exhibiting a single program of redemption.

The Semitic Family of Languages

Just as truly as the genius of the Greek language imposed its stamp upon the New Testament
revelation and the terms in which its message was cast, even so was the genius of the Hebrew
language determinative for the expression of the Old Testament message. It made a great deal of
difference that Greek was precise in expressing time values, and that Hebrew laid chief emphasis
upon mode of action rather than upon tenses. Adequate interpretation of the Old Testament
revelation demands a thorough grasp of these peculiar traits of the Hebrew verb and of Hebrew
syntax generally; otherwise much misunderstanding and wresting of the Scriptures will result.
To a very large extent, Hebrew shared these grammatical and syntactical characteristics with the
rest of the Semitic languages. Therefore it is important to examine these related tongues and
derive from them the light which they can throw upon Hebrew usage. Moreover, in the matter of
vocabulary, the study of Comparative Semitics is of utmost significance. It often happens that a
word which appears only once or twice in the Hebrew Bible is found quite commonly in some of
the related languages, and can be interpreted with a high degree of accuracy by comparison with
them.
The traditional classification of the various Semitic languages divides them, according to the
geographical location of the nations speaking them, into north, south, east, and west. East
Semitic includes but one main language, Akkadian, divided into the slightly differing dialects of
Babylonian and Assyrian. South Semitic includes Arabic (subdivided into North Arabic, the
classical, literary language; and South Arabic with its subdialects: Sabean, Minean, Qatabanian,
and Hadramautian) and Ethiopic (or Geez) with its modern descendant, Amharic. Northwest-
Semitic embraces both the Canaanite and the Aramaic dialects, which is usually divided into
eastern and western branches (the eastern being the basis for the Syriac language of the Christian
era, and the western being the basis for biblical Aramaic as found in Daniel and Ezra). West
Semitic (often classed with Aramaic in what is called Northwest Semitic by modern scholars) is
comprised of Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Canaanite (of which Hebrew and Moabite are dialects).
It should be added that the newly discovered Eblaic language from Tell Mardikh would seem to
be basically Canaanite, in its vocabulary, but somewhat East Semitic in its morphology. Dating
from the 24th century B.C., it is as old as the Akkadian of Sargon I of Agade. For a more
extensive treatment of Ebla, see Excursus 2.
Non-Semitic tongues which contributed some terms in the Hebrew language include: (1) the
basically Hamitic speech of Egypt (which was subjected to Semitic influence upon the Hamitic
inhabitants of the Nile Valley); (2) Sumerian, the agglutinative speech of the earlier, non-Semitic
race which conquered and civilized Lower Mesopotamia prior to the Babylonians; and (3) the
Indo-Iranian Persian which appears in post-Exilic books like Daniel and Ezra, and is distantly
related to Greek. Each of these contributed a small percentage of vocabulary to biblical Hebrew.

2
The Inspiration of the Old Testament

Evidence for the Unique Inspiration of the Bible

BEFORE COMMENCING a higher critical study of the Old Testament, it is appropriate for us to
come to terms with the basic question of what kind of book it is. If it is merely a product of
human genius, like many other documents upon which religions have been founded, then the
data which it presents must be handled in one specific way. That is, these holy writings must be
dealt with in purely literary terms, and naturalistic explanations must be found for every feature
which appears to be supernatural (such as fulfilled prophecy). If, on the other hand, the thirty-
nine books of the Old Testament are inspired by God, employing human instruments to record
the truth He revealed to man, then the data must be handled in a quite different fashion. That is to
say, everything which might appear to be inconsistent with that standard of accuracy and truth
which divine inspiration presupposes must be carefully investigated in order to arrive at a
satisfactory reconciliation of apparent discrepancies. Thus the whole line of investigation is
profoundly influenced by the premise with which we start.
This is not the place to enter into a thorough treatment of Christian evidences; that is the
province of textbooks on apologetics. But it is appropriate to suggest here, at least in a cursory
way, why it is reasonable and proper to start with the premise that the Old Testament is a
collection of books inspired by God.
In the first place, there is significant unity which underlies the entire collection of thirty-nine
books in the Old Testament, betraying an organic interconnection which carries through the
many centuries during which it was being composed. These books exhibit a remarkable
singleness of purpose and program, most reasonably explained as the operation of a single mind,
the mind of the divine Author Himself. (A classic discussion of this aspect of Scripture is found
in chap. 2 of James Orr’s Problem of the Old Testament [POT]. Though he published this work
in 1907 [New York: Scribner], Orr’s line of argument has never been successfully refuted and is
still valid today.)
Second, of all world religions, only the Hebrew-Christian offers a logically defensible
epistemology (science of religious knowledge). The end result of four thousand years of human
investigation and philosophic inquiry has, apart from the Bible itself, been hopeless disagreement
and confusion in the whole area of religion. Some theorists have urged the manufacturing of a
system of ethics and vague theism which they call a world religion. But the fact remains that the
tensions between Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are just as sharp today
as they ever have been, even though milder methods of propagation or protection are usually
employed today than in earlier ages. They still give entirely different answers to the question,
“What must I do to be saved?”
Contrast the situation which prevails in the realms of medicine and science. The many centuries
of experimentation and research have resulted in general agreement among all civilized nations
as to the basic laws of chemistry and physics. To be sure, the emergence of new data makes
necessary the constant revision of the theories and conclusions which scientists publish from
year to year; but by and large, the scientific world remains in substantial agreement the world
over.
In the case of religion, however, which deals with questions of the greatest importance for
mankind, there has appeared no consensus whatsoever. It often happens that two men who have
been reared as brothers in the same home, have enjoyed the same educational advantages, and
possess the same degree of intelligence, may hold views of religion which diametrically oppose
each other. If it were possible for the tools of human reason and scientific research to lead to
valid results in the realm of metaphysics, men of equal education and enlightenment would
surely come to some measure of agreement (just as they do in philology or science). Nothing,
however, could be further from the case so far as religion is concerned. We are scarcely any
nearer to agreement today than our ancestors were four thousand years ago; perhaps even less so,
for they had not yet invented atheistic naturalism at that early period. It logically follows that
human investigation, even with the most careful and scientific methodology, can lead to nothing
more solid than mere conjecture when it comes to the destiny of the soul and the meaning of life.
Man by his own searching cannot find out God; at best he can only conjecture. A guilty
defendant before the court can hardly be objective about himself.
How then can we know God or His will for our lives? Only if He reveals Himself to us! Unless
He Himself tells us, we can never know for sure the answers to those questions which matter
most to us as human beings. At this point it is important to observe that the Bible presents itself
to us as the written revelation of God. This purports to be a book in which God gives us the
answers to the great questions which concern our soul, and which all the wisdom and science of
man are powerless to solve with any degree of certainty. The Bible asserts of itself that it is the
special revelation from God; it must therefore be acknowledged as claiming to be the right kind
of source from which to derive a trustworthy knowledge of religious truth. It comes to us with
the claim that the words are from God Himself: “Thus saith the Lord.” If there be a God, and if
He is concerned for our salvation, this is the only way (apart from direct revelation from God to
each individual of each successive generation) that He could reliably impart this knowledge to
us. It must be through a reliable written record such as the Bible purports to be.

Inerrancy of the Original Autographs

We must next ask ourselves the question, What kind of record is this Book going to be? One
containing errors of various kinds, or one free from all error? If this written revelation contains
mistakes, then it can hardly fulfill its intended purpose: to convey to man in a reliable way the
will of God for his salvation. Why is this so? Because a demonstrated mistake in one part gives
rise to the possibility that there may be mistakes in other parts of the Bible. If the Bible turns out
to be a mixture of truth and error, then it becomes a book like any other.
No doubt, there is truth in every other religious document known to man—the Koran, the Vedas,
the Upanishads, the Analects, the Iliad, and the Odyssey—even though this truth may coexist
with an abundance of error. What is to be done with books of this sort, books containing both
truth and error? There is only one thing that can be done, and that is to subject them to the
critical faculty of the human reason. Within proper limits, to be sure, the reasoning powers of
man have a legitimate and necessary function in weighing the evidences presented by these
documents, to see whether they are consistent with divine origin. Here it is a question of
recognizing the identity of a purported revelation as to whether it is the Word of God. Human
reason is competent to pass upon these evidences, applying the rule of self-contradiction and the
other canons of logic, in order to determine whether the data of the texts themselves square with
the claims of divine origin. (It has already been pointed out in footnote 3 that only the Bible, as
opposed to other religious documents, contains decisive evidences of divine inspiration and
authority.)
But it is a very different thing for human reason to attempt to pass judgment upon divine
revelation as such, to determine its truth or falsity. For such judgments to be valid, they must
proceed from a Judge who possesses a knowledge of metaphysical truth which is superior to that
of the revelation itself. In other words, man must know more about God and the soul and
spiritual values than the Bible itself knows, if he is to pass valid judgment on the truth of the
Bible. But this is obviously not the case, as pointed out previously (pp. 22–23), and therefore
man is totally dependent on divine revelation for this all-important knowledge. For this reason, if
that revelation is to come in a usable and reliable form, not dependent on man’s fallible
judgment, it must come in an inerrant form. Otherwise it would depend ultimately on the
authority of man for its validation, and. therefore, could not serve its purpose as a trustworthy
disclosure of divine truth.

Textual Transmission not Necessarily Infallible

At this point we must make a distinction. Inerrancy (freedom from all error) is necessary only for
the original manuscripts (autographs) of the biblical books. They must have been free from all
mistakes, or else they could not have been truly inspired by the God of truth in whom is no
darkness at all. God could never have inspired a human author of Scripture to write anything
erroneous or false. To say that God could not use fallible man as an instrument of His infallible
truth is as illogical as to insist that an artist can never produce a valid painting because his brush
is capable of slipping.
But what about the text of the Bible as we now possess it? Is that text necessarily free from all
mistakes of every kind? Not when it comes to copyists’ errors, for we certainly do find
discrepancies among the handwritten copies that have been preserved to us, even those which
come from the earliest centuries. Some slips of the pen may have crept into the first copies made
from the original manuscripts, and additional errors of a transmissional type could have found
their way into the copies of copies. It is almost unavoidable that this should have been the case.
No one alive can sit down and copy out the text of an entire book without a mistake of any kind.
(Those who doubt this statement are invited to try it themselves!) It would take nothing short of a
miracle to insure the inerrancy of a copy of an original manuscript.
Granted, then, that errors have crept into our texts as we now have them, how can they serve as a
reliable medium for disclosing God’s will? Are we not right back with the problem of books
containing both truth and error? Not at all, for there is a great difference between a document
which was wrong at the start and a document which was right at the start but was miscopied. One
may read a letter from his friend or relative and find in it such common slips as of for or, or and
for an, or led for lead and yet by a simple process of correction in the light of the context, he
may easily arrive at the true sense intended by the writer. Only if the errors which have gotten
into the copies are so serious as to pervert the sense altogether does the message fail in accurate
communication. But if the letter came from a correspondent who was confused, mistaken, or
deceitful, then the errors and misinformation it contains are beyond remedy and the reader is
injured thereby.

EXTRABIBLICAL
HISTORIANS

Author Date Title of Work

Eusebius Ca. A.D. 263–340 The Life of Constantine,
Ecclesiastical History

Herodotus Ca. B.C. 484–425 The Histories

Flavius Josephus A.D. 37–97 Antiquities of the Jews,

Bellum Judaicum

Philo of Alexandria 30 B.C.–A.D. 40 Allegories of the Sacred Law

Polybius Ca. 203–120 B.C. Histories

Strabo Ca. 64 B.C.–A.D. 24 Geography

Suetonius Ca. A.D. 69–140 The Twelve Caesars

Tacitus Ca. A.D. 58–120 Germania, Historiae, Annals

Thucydides Ca. 460–400 B.C. The History of the

Peloponnesian Wars

Xenophon Ca. 430–355 B.C. Anabasis, Cyropaedia,

Hellenica, Memorabilia

An objection is raised in modern scholarly circles in regard to the faithfulness of the transmission
of the original text of scripture which seems to be quite specious and illogical. In view of the
unquestioning acceptance of so many of the earliest surviving copies of Greek and Latin classical
authors, very seldom is any objection raised on the ground of their unreliability because they are
late or because there are so few of them. But, in the case of the Bible there are hundreds of
witnesses to the text of the Old Testament and over 20,000 witnesses to the text of the New
Testament in their original languages and therefore it is safe to say that no documents of ancient
times have ever had such a full and impressive witness to the text as is found for the 66 books of
the Bible. It is highly significant that these non-biblical texts are so cheerfully accepted even
though, for example works of Tacitus, Lucretius, Catullus, and Aristotle have fewer than five
extant copies each, and largely bear much later datings than many biblical texts. It is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that the objection as to the trustworthiness of the text is hardly sincere, but
rather it appears as special pleading on the basis of a hostile bias that is scarcely worthy of
responsible scholarship. It should be added that this kind of concern for flawless accuracy has a
certain bearing on related matters such as the standard of weights and measures which should
prevail throughout a society. One can hardly purchase an absolutely perfect pound or an
absolutely perfect foot measure in any store in America. But, we all understand that in the
Bureau of Weights and Measures in Washington D.C. there is a perfect standard. Those
measures and weights that can be purchased can be judged by reference to those in the Bureau of
Weights and Measures for objective verification.

COMPARISON OF OTHER ANCIENT WRITINGS

AUTHOR Earliest Copy No. of Copies

Caesar 900 A.D. 10

Plato (Tetralogies) 900 A.D. 20

Tacitus (Annals) 1100 A.D. 20

also minor works 1000 A.D. 1

Pliny the Younger (History) 850 A.D. 7

Thucydides (History) 900 A.D. 8

Suetonius 950 A.D. 8

Herodotus (History) 900 A.D. 8

Sophocles 1000 A.D. 100

Catullus 1550 A.D. 3

Euripedes 1100 A.D. 9

Demosthenes 1100 A.D. 200

Aristotle 1100 A.D. 5

Aristophanes 900 A.D. 10

This brings up the question of the faithfulness of the transmission of the Bible text. There are
numerous types of manuscript error which the textual critic may discover in the early
manuscripts of the Old Testament. (These will be discussed in chap. 4). Are these of so serious a
nature as to corrupt the message itself, or make it impossible to convey the true meaning? If they
are, then God’s purpose has been frustrated; He could not convey His revelation so that those of
later generations could understand it aright. If He did not exercise a restraining influence over the
scribes who wrote out the standard and authoritative copies of the Scriptures, then they corrupted
and falsified the message. If the message was falsified, the whole purpose of bestowing a written
revelation has come to naught; for such a corrupted Scripture would be a mere mixture of truth
and error, necessarily subject to human judgment (rather than sitting in judgment upon man).
Do we have any objective evidence that errors of transmission have not been permitted by God
to corrupt and pervert His revelation? Yes, we have, for a careful study of the variants (different
readings) of the various earliest manuscripts reveals that none of them affects a single doctrine of
Scripture. The system of spiritual truth contained in the standard Hebrew text of the Old
Testament is not in the slightest altered or compromised by any of the variant readings found in
the Hebrew manuscripts of earlier date found in the Dead Sea caves or anywhere else. All that is
needed to verify this is to check the register of well-attested variants in Rudolf Kittel’s edition of
the Hebrew Bible or else the more recent Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. It is very evident that
the vast majority of them are so inconsequential as to leave the meaning of each clause
doctrinally unaffected.
It should be clearly understood that in this respect, the Old Testament differs from all other pre-
Christian works of literature of which we have any knowledge. To be sure, we do not possess
ordinarily so many different manuscripts of pagan productions, coming from such widely
separated eras, as we do in the case of the Old Testament. Strong confirmation of this type of
copyist error is found in various pagan records that have been preserved to us for the purposes of
comparison. For example, in the Behistun Rock inscription set up by Darius 1, around 510 B.C.,
we find that line 38 gives the figure for the slain of the army of Frada as 55,243, with 6,572
prisoners—according to the Babylonian column. In a duplicate copy of this inscription found at
Babylon itself, the number of prisoners was 6,973. But in the Aramaic translation of this
inscription discovered at the Elephantine in Egypt, the number of prisoners was only 6,972—
precisely the same discrepancy as we have noted in the comparison of Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7
(cf. E. W. König, Relief und Inschrift des Königs Dareios I am Felsen von Bagistan [Leiden:
Brill, 1938], p. 48). Similarly in line 31 of the same inscription, the Babylonian column gives
2,045 as the number of slain in the rebellious army of Frawartish, along with 1,558 prisoners,
whereas the Aramaic copy has over 1,575 as the prisoner count (ibid., p. 45). (For greater detail
on the discrepancies between the three-language inscription of Darius I on the above mentioned
Behistun Rock inscription [i.e., the Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite], and the Aramaic papyrus
copy found in the Elephantine, consult E. W. König: ibid, pp. 36–57.) But where we do, for
example in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the variations are of a far more extensive and serious
nature. Quite startling differences appear, for example, between chapter 15 contained in the
Papyrus of Ani (written in the Eighteenth Dynasty) and the Turin Papyrus (from the Twenty-
sixth Dynasty or later). Whole clauses are inserted or left out, and the sense in corresponding
columns of text is in some cases altogether different. Apart from divine superintendence of the
transmission of the Hebrew text, there is no particular reason why the same phenomenon of
discrepancy and change would not appear between Hebrew manuscripts produced centuries
apart. Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in
1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D.
980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95
percent of the text, but in 1QIsb, (ca. 75 B.C.) the preserved text is almost letter for letter identical
with the Leningrad Manuscript. The five percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips
of the pen and variations in spelling. Even those Dead Sea fragments of Deuteronomy and
Samuel which point to a different manuscript family from that which underlies our received
Hebrew text do not indicate any differences in doctrine or teaching. They do not affect the
message of revelation in the slightest.

The Doctrine of Inspiration Affirmed by Scripture

Does the Bible assert infallibility for itself? It has sometimes been argued that the Scriptures do
not even claim inerrancy for themselves. But careful investigation shows that whenever they
discuss the subject, they do in fact assert absolute authority for themselves as the inerrant Word
of God.
Matt. 5:18: “For verily I [Christ] say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot [the smallest
letter in the Hebrew alphabet] or one tittle [a distinguishing projection in Hebrew letters] shall in
no wise pass from the Law [the Old Testament], till all be fulfilled.” This indicates that not only
the thoughts conveyed by Scripture, but also the individual words themselves, as valid vehicles
of those thoughts and as spelled out by individual letters, are possessed of infallible truth and
will surely find their fulfillment and realization.
John 10:35: “The Scripture cannot be broken” carries the same implications as the preceding.
2 Tim. 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed [theopneustos], and is profitable for doctrine.” From
New Testament usage it can easily be established that “Scripture” (graphē) refers to the whole
canon of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament as we have them today. 2 Peter 3:16 implies
that Paul’s New Testament epistles also enjoy the same status as inspired Scriptures (graphai).
Heb. 1:1–2: “God, who … spake … by the prophets, hath … spoken unto us by his Son.” This
asserts the same infallibility for the writings of the Old Testament prophets as it attaches to the
New Testament message of Christ Himself.
1 Peter 1:10–11: “Of which salvation the [Old Testament] prophets have inquired and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: searching what, or what
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand
the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” The implication is that the Holy Spirit
was in these Old Testament authors, and that He guided them into composing words of infallible
truth sure of fulfillment, even though the human authors themselves might not fully know all that
these divinely guided words actually signified. Because of verses like these, in interpreting
Scripture we must seek to establish not merely the intention of the human author who wrote the
words, but also (and more important) the intention of the divine Author who guided in the
composition of those words.
2 Peter 1:21: “The prophecy [the Old Testament prophetic Scriptures] came not in old time by
the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved [carried along, as the wind bears
along a sailing ship] by the Holy Ghost.” In their speech (as committed to writing) these Old
Testament authors who prophesied of Christ were supernaturally carried into inerrant truth, truth
that is not to be subjected to mere “private interpretation” (v. 20).
All these passages add up to this doctrine of inspiration: that accuracy inheres in every part of the
Old Testament as well as the New Testament, so that as a whole and in all its parts, the Bible is
infallible as to truth and final as to authority. This accuracy extends even to matters of history
and science as well as to theology and morals. Some scholars, such as Henry P. Smith and
Charles A. Briggs, have attempted to draw a distinction between these two types of truth, and
allow for error to inhere in matters of mere history or science. To this position there are two fatal
objections. First, the New Testament makes no such distinction: the historicity of the literal
Adam and Eve is implied in 1 Tim. 2:13–14 (otherwise Paul’s comment would be quite
irrelevant); as also in 1 Cor. 11:8–9, which clearly affirms that Eve was literally formed from a
part of Adam’s body, as Gen. 2:22 states; the literal historical experience of Jonah’s three days in
the stomach of the whale is absolutely essential if it is to serve as an analogy for Christ’s three
days in the tomb (Matt. 12:40). It is impossible to reject the historicity of these two often
contested episodes without by implication rejecting the authority of the Christ of the Gospels and
of the apostle Paul in the Epistles. As to the historicity of the flood and Noah’s ark, compare
Christ’s own dictum in Matt. 24:38–39: “For as in the days that were before the flood they were
eating and drinking … until the day that Noe [Noah] entered into the ark. And they knew not
until the flood came, and took them all away.” In Matt. 19:4–5 Jesus affirmed that the words of
Gen. 2:24 were spoken by the Creator of Adam and Eve, who had just brought them together as
husband and wife. In Mark 12:26 He clearly implies that God Himself had spoken to the
historical Moses the very words of Ex. 3:6: “I am … the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob.” Note also that in Matt. 23:35 He put the historicity of Abel’s murder upon the
same plane as the murder of Zechariah, the son of Berachiah.
Second, it is not always possible to make a clean-cut separation between theology-ethics and
history-science. There are crucial cases where both types of truth are involved, as in the case of
the literal, historical Adam (upon whose fatherhood of the whole human race the whole
theological argument of Rom. 5:14–19 depends). One cannot allow for error in history-science
without also ending up with error in doctrine. (So also the Apostles’ Creed: 1. Creation
performed by a personal God, “Maker of heaven and earth,” rather than through impersonal
forces and mechanistic evolution. 2. God has a unique Son—Jesus. 3. Jesus was fathered by God
the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin at a specific moment in history. 4. Jesus suffered under
Pilate—crucified, died, and was buried. 5. The bodily resurrection of Christ on the third day.)
This brief survey of the views of Christ and His apostles serves to indicate that they regarded the
Old Testament in its entirety as the inerrant record of God’s revelation to man. In other words,
the basic ground for the complete trustworthiness of Scripture is the trustworthiness of God
Himself. When the Scripture speaks, it is God who speaks; unlike any other book ever written,
the Word of God is “living and operative” (Heb. 4:12 says that the logos of God is zōn and
energēs) and penetrates to the innermost being of man, sitting in judgment upon all human
philosophies and reasonings with absolute and sovereign authority. Such a judgmental
prerogative on the part of the Bible must presuppose its complete inerrancy, for if error inhered
in the original text of Scripture on any level, it would inevitably be the object of man’s judgment,
rather than that authority which sits in judgment upon man.
In the last analysis, then, every man must settle for one of two alternatives: the inerrancy of Holy
Scripture, or the inerrancy of his own personal judgment. If the Bible contains errors in the
autographs, then it requires an infallible human judgment to distinguish validly between the false
and the true in Scripture; it is necessary for every affirmation in the sacred text to receive
endorsement from the human critic himself before it may be accepted as true. Since men disagree
in their critical judgments, it requires absolute inerrancy on the part of each individual to render a
valid judgment in each instance. Even the agnostic must assert for himself such infallibility of
judgment, for he cannot logically assume an agnostic position unless he can affirm that he has
surveyed all the evidence for the authority of Scripture and has come to a valid judgment that the
evidence is insufficient to prove the divine authority of the Bible as the Word of God. These,
then, are the only alternatives available to us as we confront the Scriptures: either they are
inerrant, or else we are.

The Infallible Proof of Fulfilled Prophecy

There is in holy Scripture a form of evidence which is discoverable in no other religious

document known to man; that is the phenomenon of prediction and fulfillment according to an
ordered plan followed by a God who is sovereign over history. No one could suppose that he
would enjoy accuracy in fulfilling the predictions he might make concerning the future.
Occasional human predictions might come to pass, but in the Scripture we have many hundreds
of predictions which are revealed by God and which are later fulfilled in events of subsequent
history.
None of us can be sure of what will happen to ourselves, or those in our immediate environment
within the next twenty-four hours. Those who have attempted to predict future events have often
been disappointed. In view of man’s inability to foretell the future with any high degree of
accuracy one is forced to the conclusion that the kind of fulfillments that are found in Scripture
could only come from God Himself.
No scholar yet has been able to explain how the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah could have described
so accurately what was to be the suffering of our Lord on Good Friday as the New Testament
records. Similarly, the prediction of Isa. 49:6 was given at a time when Israel had suffered major
defeats and losses through the oppression of her enemies and it was highly questionable whether
any knowledge of the Hebrew religion would even be retained in future generations by any
people. But Isa. 49:6 records the promise of God that the Servant of the Lord would bring to pass
not only the regathering of the scattered people of Israel to their native land, but also that He
would be a light unto the Gentiles unto the ends of the earth. Very clearly this refers to the events
that followed the resurrection of Christ and the launching of the missionary enterprise that
ultimately compelled even the empire of Rome to surrender to the Lordship of the Redeemer
they had crucified. From there the message of the Gospel has gone out to every continent in the
world so that there are large numbers of people who have been brought into a saving relationship
to God through the proclamation of His atoning grace as promised in Isa. 49. There is no
possible way to explain this kind of fulfillment on the basis of mere human literary activity or
speculation. For further detail and examples of fulfillments the reader is encouraged to consult
Excursus 1.

Subbiblical Views of Inspiration

Those who incline to a Neo-Orthodox approach in dealing with the inspiration of Scripture have
usually (like H. H. Rowley of Manchester) set up the so-called “mind of Christ” as a standard for
judging between doctrinal truth and error in the Bible. For example, they say that when Joshua
and the Israelites slew the entire population of Jericho, this was due to their primitive or savage
ideas of justice, rather than to the express commandment of God, as recorded in Deut. 20:16–18.
Statements or judgments attributed to God in the Old Testament but which seem to be too severe
for Christ’s standard of meekness, patience, and love as contained in the New Testament, are to
be rejected as mere human inventions concocted by Israel in their backward stage of religious
development. The criterion of truth should be “the mind of Christ” as understood and approved
by modern scholarship.
Nevertheless, investigation will show that many of Christ’s statements recorded in the New
Testament clash with this supposed “mind of Christ” in a most startling way. Note, for instance,
Matt. 23:33: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
Again, Matt. 25:41: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels.” We have no accredited record of what Christ’s mind actually was other than the
sayings recorded in the gospels. It is fatally inconsistent to set up a philosophic notion as to what
the viewpoint of Christ actually was, on the basis of some of His recorded statements, and then
to reject the authenticity of other statements recorded in the same source, simply because they
conflict with modern preference. Such a procedure really amounts to imposing human judgment
upon the written Word of God, and allowing only that portion of the Word to be true which the
human mind endorses. But we have already seen that the human reason is an inadequate and
discredited tool for attaining true religious knowledge. If the Bible is truly the Word of God, it
must sit in judgment upon man; man is not competent to sit in judgment upon the Holy Bible.
His reasoning powers are to be employed in the task of consistent interpretation of the message
of the Bible, in order that he may be sure to understand what God means by the words of
Scripture. But never may he pass judgment against the clear teachings of Scripture as established
by exegesis; for if he does, he by implication rejects the authority of Scripture as a whole.
More typically Neo-Orthodox is the view which regards the Bible as something less than the
written Word of God; the Bible is merely a witness to the Word of God. According to this view,
the Word of God is a dynamic principle which comes into operation only when there is a living
or “existential” encounter between the believer and God. God speaks with power to him from the
pages of Holy Writ and establishes a personal relationship, rather than merely instilling
propositional truth into his mind. (Propositional here refers to the kind of truth which may be
stated in propositions, such as, “God is an eternal Spirit.” Propositions may be grasped as mere
objects of knowledge, like mathematical formulas; but divine truth, it is urged, can never be
mastered by man’s mind. Divine truth reaches man in an “I-Thou” encounter; it is like an electric
current with both a positive pole and a negative pole as conditions for existence.) Since the
biblical text was written by human authors, and all men are sinful and subject to error, therefore,
it is claimed, there must be error in the biblical text itself. But, it is argued, the living God is able
to speak even from this partially erroneous text and bring believers into vital relationship with
Him in a saving encounter. Such a view of the Bible leaves ample room for all manner of
scientific and historical errors, and for all the adverse judgments of rationalistic higher criticism
against the authenticity of the writings of Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, and all the rest. All these
findings may be (and undoubtedly are) true as an accurate account of how the Bible humanly
originated. Nevertheless, God has appointed this error-studded Scripture to be a uniquely
authoritative witness to His revelation, and He is able to use it in a dynamic way to “save” men.
Thus, in their zeal to sidestep the assaults of rationalistic higher criticism upon the
trustworthiness of the biblical record, and to rescue the significance of the Christian message in
the face of scientific objections to the supernatural, the theologians of the Neo-Orthodox
movement have resorted to a paradoxical view of the nature of revelation itself. They hold the
position that by its very nature, divine revelation cannot be inscripturated. As soon as it is
imprisoned in words, especially words setting forth propositions about God and spiritual truth,
then it becomes the object of men’s minds and cognitive powers. It thus falls under the control of
man, and finds itself imprisoned within the covers of the written word. Revelation therefore is
not to be equated with revealed doctrines or propositions about theology; rather, it consists of a
direct encounter between God and man, as one subject confronting another subject. Revelation
thus bears an analogy to a personal encounter between human beings; they experience each other
as personalities, rather than as a set of statistics or items of information on an identification card.
From this same viewpoint it may be urged that it is a matter of no consequence whether the
accounts recorded in Scripture are accurate or not. The gospel record of the virgin birth, for
example, or the bodily resurrection of Christ, may very well be unhistorical (since modern
scientific theory leaves no room for such miraculous events), but this makes no particular
difference. Through these pious legends of the early church, we may encounter God and the
suprahistorical realities to which these stories point. To rely upon the infallible accuracy of the
written record of the Bible is held to be an obstacle to true faith. The dogma of an infallible
Scripture operates as an unhealthy crutch upon which to lean; true faith soars above the manifest
errors of the Bible to the transcendental truth to which the Bible points—truth available to the
believer only through a personal encounter with the living God.
But this Neo-Orthodox view is confronted with a host of logical difficulties. It puts the authority
of Scripture on the basis of sheer unverifiable faith. How can we be sure that God has not spoken
to us from the record of the Koran (which is demonstrably full of errors and anachronisms), or
from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or from the Hindu Vedas? Why only from the Bible?
Objective verification is not only discarded as impossible, but the desire for it is condemned as
reprehensibly earthbound and rationalistic. One must simply believe! Whom or what? Why, the
Scripture, of course. But regrettably enough, the Scripture itself seems to be totally unaware of
this Neo-Orthodox approach to religious knowledge. It positively bristles with propositional
truths about God, truths which may be reduced to creedal statements which the human mind may
intellectually grasp. Perhaps this may be explained away as a manifestation of the fallibility and
frailty of the sinful men who wrote the Bible. But how does one get beyond the text of the Bible
to the more rarefied, ineffable, suprahistorical, personal-encounter truth which is supposed to lie
beyond? Why, by a direct encounter with God, of course! Yes, but whose direct encounter?
Barth’s? Brunner’s? Niebuhr’s? Tillch’s? These giants of the Neo-Orthodox movement have
many stark disagreements among themselves on matters theological. Some, like Barth, disagree
even with themselves quite noticeably from decade to decade. It is hard to see how the eternal
and unchanging truth of God can be validly interpreted in Barth’s celebrated Commentary on
Romans, when his views are modified so remarkably as they are from edition to edition of that
work.
As a matter of fact, then, this Neo-Orthodox view of Scripture raises far more serious difficulties
than it seeks to solve. It is virtually impossible for Crisis theologians to make any affirmations at
all about God or faith or any other aspect of religious truth which do not ultimately rest upon the
propositional statements of the written Word of God. For example, to quote from William
Temple’s dictum concerning Holy Scripture: “No single sentence can be quoted as having the
authority of a distinct utterance of the all-holy God.” But how does Archbishop Temple know
that there is a single God, rather than a host of gods, as pagan religions teach; or no God at all, as
Marxism teaches? Only from the authority of the written Bible, or of a confessing church which
demonstrably trusted in the infallible authority of that Bible. Again, how does he know that the
one true God is “all-holy”? Only because the Scripture affirms Him to be so—a propositional
affirmation! Remove the authority of the written record of divine revelation, and the statement of
Temple or Brunner or any other religious teacher concerning religious truth is reduced to the
status of a mere conjecture, completely devoid of authority, and resting upon the same
questionable basis as any other human opinion.
How may we know that faith is an important and saving principle, as Neo-Orthodox teachers
insist? Only because it is so taught in the written Word of God. Otherwise it may well be, as
most of the non-Christian world believes, that salvation is achieved only by good works. Even
the possibility of an encounter between God and man is only guaranteed to us by the affirmations
of Scripture, and its numerous records of such encounters. Otherwise the whole “experience” of
divine-human encounter may be a mere matter of hallucination and autosuggestion, devoid of
metaphysical reality.
Thus it turns out that every religious affirmation of the adherents of this school is ultimately
dependent upon the truthfulness of the written Word of God, the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures. If
these are erroneous in any portion, then they may be erroneous in any other portion; no reliance
can be placed in them at all, or indeed in any affirmation which Neo-Orthodox theologians have
derived from them—and all their doctrinal statements about God, encounter, and faith have in
fact been derived from them. In other words, if the authority of the Bible as written cannot be
trusted, then no insight of crisis theology has any more value than a mere human opinion—
unless perchance the theologian happens to enjoy in his own person the very attribute of
infallibility which he denies to Scripture.
 PROCEDURES FOR HANDLING BIBLICAL DIFFICULTIES

1. Be fully persuaded an explanation or reconciliation exists.

2. Trust in the inerrancy of the Scripture as originally written down.
3. Carefully study the context and framework of the verse to ascertain the
original intent of the author.
4. Practice careful exegesis: determine author intent, study key words, note
parallel passages.
5. Harmonize parallel passages.
6. Consult Bible commentaries, dictionaries, lexical sources, encyclopedias.
7. Check for a transmissional error in the original text.
8. Remember that the historical accuracy of the biblical text is unsurpassed; that
the transmitted text of Scripture is supported by thousands of extant
manuscripts some of which date back to the second century B.C.

This brings us to the question of the peculiarity of Neo-Orthodox faith, the faith which soars to
God without the fettering dogma of scriptural inerrancy. What is faith, but a trust in something or
someone other than itself? In what or whom, then, is this exalted faith reposed? Ostensibly it is
reposed in God, or in the insights derived from religious experience as the believer encounters
God, whether in the pages of Scripture or in some other context. But how are these insights to be
adjudged in their validity? Since they cannot be verified by appeal to any objective authority
whatever (whether the Scripture or an infallible human teacher or church), the believer cannot
look to any authority except his own. He cannot even be sure that there is a God, if the Bible is
not reliable as an objective witness; he can only trust in himself. In other words, this Neo-
Orthodox type of faith must in the last analysis be faith in man, not in God; that is, the believer’s
faith is reposed in himself. Since the Bible cannot be trusted, nor any human authority either
(since humanity implies fallibility), therefore the Neo-Orthodox believer can know nothing
except his own opinion, and hope that this may turn out to be correct. Otherwise he is
irretrievably lost. It is only a bit of self-deception for him to suppose that his faith rests in a God
outside himself; lacking any objective authority whatever, he is at the mercy of his own
subjective impressions and opinions. He can never be sure that his revelations are not mere
hallucinations.

Dealing with Difficulties in the Bible

It must be admitted that the text of Scripture as transmitted to us contains occasional difficulties
which appear to challenge the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Some of these difficulties are
relieved by a proper use of the science of textual criticism. Others, such as discrepancies in
statistics or the spelling of names, call for an emending of text which goes beyond the available
data of textual criticism. Still others present logical difficulties, such as the endorsement given in
Judg. 11 to the apparent sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter, when Deut. 12:31 forbids all human
sacrifice in Israel.
There are two possible methods of dealing with these problems: (1) one may hold in abeyance
the biblical claims to infallibility until each individual difficulty is cleared up. Each time a new
problem presents itself, the Bible becomes demoted to a suspect status until the matter is
satisfactorily settled. Meanwhile, the believer is kept on the tenterhooks of painful suspense and
anguish of soul until the Bible is again cleared of the charges against it. (2) One may, even in the
face of apparent discrepancies, retain his faith in the infallibility of the biblical record and wait
with patience for the vindication which later investigation will surely provide. Having been
convinced that only divine origin explains the phenomena of Scripture, he may take his stand
with Jesus of Nazareth upon the inerrancy of the written Word of God, and look forward to an
eventual clearing up of all the problems that may arise.
Those who follow this second approach may perhaps be accused of illogical subjectivism,
because they proceed on the basis of an a priori conviction. But this accusation is not well
founded, for the Bible cannot be studied at all except upon the basis of one a priori or another.
One must start with the prior assumption that the Bible is either a fallible record or an infallible
one. There is no middle ground; one cannot remain in a state of neutral suspense and insist, “Just
let the Bible speak for itself.” We must first of all ascertain what kind of book this Bible is which
does the speaking. Is it the infallible Word of God, or is it the error-prone product of man, having
elements of divine truth intermingled with human mistakes? If it presents such data as to compel
an acknowledgment that it can be only of divine origin—and it does present such data in
abundance—then the only reasonable course is to take seriously its own assertions of
infallibility. If the Scriptures constitute an authoritative self-disclosure of God, then any
discrepancies which appear must be dealt with as only apparent, not real. When all the facts are
in, the charges of error will prove to be unsubstantiated.
It should be pointed out that such a procedure is commonly followed in human relations without
adverse criticism. For example, a husband who has come to the conviction that his wife is a
faithful and virtuous woman will steadfastly refuse to become suspicious of her, even though she
has been seen going out with some other man. Without jumping to adverse conclusions, he will
simply await further information which will clear up the situation and satisfactorily explain her
association with the man in question. It would be foolish and unworthy for him to abandon his
conviction of her integrity until her action is vindicated. Only an initial presumption that she is
inconstant and untrustworthy would justify such a reaction on his part.
Even so it is foolish and unworthy for one who has been convinced of the divine authority of the
Bible to question its infallibility until each new allegation against it has been cleared up. Rather
than being a scientific and objective procedure, as is sometimes asserted, such a policy involves
only an illogical shifting from one a priori to another with weakminded vacillation. A genuine,
outright contradiction in the Scriptures (especially if demonstrable for the original autographs)
would be good cause for abandoning faith in the inerrancy of Scripture; but until such has been
proved, or until some outright error in history or science has been demonstrated according to the
laws of legal evidence, the believer in Scripture need never feel embarrassed about holding to the
assumption that it is the inerrant Word of God. It is highly significant that no such mistake has
ever yet been proved to the satisfaction of a court of law, although various attempts have been
made to do so.

PART ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION

3
The Hebrew Manuscripts and the Early
Versions
WE NO LONGER have access to infallible originals of the various books of the Hebrew
Scriptures. The earliest copies which have been preserved to us are in some instances no closer
than a thousand years to the time of original composition. Nevertheless they constitute our
primary authority today as to the inspired Word of God, and all our copies and translations of the
Holy Scriptures are necessarily dependent upon the earliest and best available manuscripts of the
Hebrew and Aramaic originals. We must therefore review the written evidence upon which our
modern printed editions of the Hebrew Bible are based, and have some idea of the large and
varied body of evidence with which Old Testament textual criticism has to deal.
Of course the Hebrew manuscripts take priority in value, inasmuch as God’s revelation first
came to Israel in the Hebrew tongue, and there is far less likelihood of corruption in the copying
out of manuscripts into the same language than when a translation into another tongue is
involved. But in cases where scribal errors have crept into the Hebrew copies, it is quite possible
that the early translations into Greek, Aramaic, or Latin might give us a clue to the original
Hebrew word or phrase which has been garbled in the Hebrew manuscripts themselves. For this
reason we must survey not only the earliest and best Hebrew manuscripts, but also the earliest
and best copies of the ancient translations, or versions, as well.

The Pre-Christian Manuscripts

The pre-Christian manuscripts consist principally of the remarkable discoveries in the Dead Sea
caves. Technically these are referred to as Qumran materials, since the various caves in which
these discoveries were found are located near the canyon of the Wadi Qumran along the
northwest coast of the Dead Sea. The technical identification of these Dead Sea documents
consists of the number specifying which of the caves was the scene of its discovery, followed by
an abbreviation of the name of the book itself, plus a superior letter indicating the order in which
this particular manuscript came to light, as over against other copies of the same book. For
example, the famous Dead Sea Isaiah Scroll—which still remains the only complete copy of a
book of the Old Testament yet discovered and published—is technically referred to as 1QIsa,
meaning: the first discovered (or most important) manuscript of Isaiah found in Cave 1 of Wadi
Qumran. The so-called Hebrew University Scroll of Isaiah (although 1QIsa has also now passed
into the possession of the Hebrew University, by way of purchase from St. Mark’s Monastery) is
technically known as 1QIsb.

EARLIEST
MANUSCRIPTS

Pre-Christian

Qumran Scrolls 300 B.C. Varied Old Testament

A.D. 50 Texts

Post-Christian

British Museum Oriental A.D. 850 Pentateuch

Codex Cairensis A.D. 895 Former and latter prophets

Aleppo Codex A.D. 900 Old Testament

Leningrad MS A.D. 916 Latter prophets

Leningrad MS B-19A A.D. 1010 Old Testament

Samaritan Pentateuch unavailable Pentateuch

Torah Finchasiye A.D. 1204 Pentateuch

Printed Editions
Bologna Edition of Psalter A.D. 1477 Psalms

Soncino Edition of Old A.D. 1488 Entire Old Testament

Testament

Second Bomberg Edition A.D. 1525/26 Entire Old Testament

Greek Versions

Septuagint 250–150 B.C. Torah

Aquila’s Version A.D. 130 Fragments

Symmachus’ Version A.D. 170 Entire Old Testament

Theodotion’s Version A.D. 180 or 190 Entire Old Testament

Aramaic Targums

Targum of Onkelos A.D. 200 Tora

Targum of Jonathan be A.D. 300 Joshua to Kings

Uzziel Isaiah to Malachi

Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan A.D. 650 Torah

Jerusalem Targum A.D. 700 Torah

Latin Versions

Old Latin; Itala Version A.D. 200 Fragments

Wurzburg Palimpsest Codex A.D. 450 Torah, Prophets

Lyons Codex A.D. 650 Genesis to Judges

Jerome’s Vulgate A.D. 390–404 Entire Old Testament

Syriac Versions
Peshitta Syriac Old A.D. 100–200 Entire Old Testament
Testament

Syriac Hexapla A.D. 616 Entire Old Testament

In addition to the biblical fragments which have been published from Cave 1 and Cave 4,
thousands of fragments have been recovered from Cave 4, with over 380 different manuscripts
identified, of which perhaps 100 are from the Old Testament. Cave 2 furnished more than 180
legible fragments (one-fourth of which were biblical). The biblical materials from Cave 3
(famous for its copper scroll containing an inventory of sacred treasure hidden for safekeeping)
and Caves 5 and 6 are rather meager and of minor importance, partly because they did not
contain material of great significance. Cave 7 has different ranges of MS fragments, all of which
are copied out in the Greek language, even though some of them translate from Old Testament
texts. For details see p. 42. There has been very little reported as yet concerning the contents of
Caves 8, 9, and 10. As for Cave 11, it has yielded five relatively complete scrolls: a portion of
Leviticus, a scroll of a selection of Psalms, an Aramaic Targum of Job, and a noncanonical
Apocalypse of the New Jerusalem.
Some of the major publications of the Qumran materials are: Millar Burrows (ed.), The Dead Sea
Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery (New Haven, Conn.: ASOR, 1950), containing the photographed
text of 1QIsa and the Habakkuk Commentary, lQpHb; O. P. Barthelemy and J. T. Milik,
Discoveries in the Judean Desert, vol. 1, Qumran Cave (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), containing
brief fragments from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Psalms; Eleazar Sukenik, WṢR HMGYLWT HGNWZWT The Treasure of the Hidden Scrolls
Jerusalem, 1954), containing the Hebrew University manuscript (MS) of Isaiah, 1QIsb. The
following is a list of the published and unpublished biblical manuscripts of which public notice
has been given in the scholarly journals.
1.The Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah (1QIsa)—the entire sixty-six chapters (150–100 B.C.). This
important text belongs to the same manuscript family as the Masoretic Text (MT). Only
occasionally does it favor a Septuagint (LXX) reading, and most of its deviations from the MT
are the result of obvious scribal lapses, for the text was rather carelessly copied. Yet some of the
proper names point to an earlier and more reliable vocalization than does the MT; for instance,
lQIsa points to the vocalization turtān (cf. the Akkadian turtannu), which is certainly more
reliable than the MT’s tartān (in 20: 1).
2. The Habakkuk Commentary (lQpHb)—chapters 1 and 2 only, with commentary notes
interspersed between verses (100–50 B.C.). Here again the Habakkuk text quoted stands in a very
close relationship to the MT. The variants are fairly numerous, though minor in character, and
often explicable as simple scribal errors. Very seldom does a variant find support in the LXX or
other versions. Incidentally, the commentary (or pesher) is of a very special kind: it is usually
concerned with how each verse has been fulfilled in recent (Hasmonean) history or by current
events.
3. The Hebrew University Isaiah Scroll (1QIsb)—substantial portions of chapters 41–66 (copied
ca. 50 B.C.). This has a far closer fidelity to the MT than lQIsa does. It was published by E. L.
Sukenik in 1948 and 1955 as The Treasure of the Hidden Scrolls, which also included the
Miḫāmah and the Hōdāyōt.
4. 1Q Leviticus fragments—a few verses each of chapters 19–22 (copied perhaps fourth century
B.C.—de Vaux, and Burrows guardedly agrees, whereas Cross prefers second century). They
were published in Barthelemy, p. 51. Textually this MS is in remarkable agreement with the MT.
It is written in paleo-Hebrew script.
5. 4Q Deuteronomy-B—32:41–43 written in hemistichs as poetry, not as prose. It favors the
LXX as against the MT in three instances. It was published by Skehan in BASOR, no. 136 (Dec
1954); he suggests no date for this.
6. 4Q Samuel-A—1 Samuel 1 and 2—twenty-seven fragments (first century B.C.). This agrees
with the LXX as against the MT in several places; in other places, it differs from both. It was
published by Cross in BASOR, no. 132 (Dec. 1953). A photo is in QHBT 273 (“Qumran and the
History of the Biblical Text”).
7. 4Q Samuel-B—1 Samuel 16, 19, 21, 23 (225 B.C. or earlier). This is even more sparing in
matres lectionis (vowel-indicating letters) than the MT. This text consistently agrees with the
LXX as against the MT. It was published by Cross in JBL, no. 74 (Sept. 1955). It was
republished in Cross & Talmon’s Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text (Harvard U. Press,
1975), in the chapter entitled “The Oldest MSS from Qumran,” pp. 147–76; transcriptions are on
pp. 170–73 (F. M. Cross); photos are on p. 154. This cross-dates Item 7 as 4th century (QHBT
167).
8. 4Q Jeremiah-A—likewise archaic and for the same reason, according to Cross, ALQ, 187;
translation only.
9. 4Q XII-A—(XII signifying a MS of the minor prophets). It is referred to by Cross in the
above-mentioned article as a third-century B.C. cursive. (4QXIIc, according to Sanders.) Semitica
5 (1955) pp. 147–72 (M. Testuz).
10. 4Q Qoha—a second century cursive text of Ecclesiastes, derived from a source at least third
century or earlier, according to Cross. It was published by James Muilenberg, “A Qoheleth
Scroll from Qumran,” BASOR, no. 135 (Oct. 1954) pp. 20–28.
11. 4Q Exodus—a fragment of chapter 1 with a variant which favors the LXX (1:5 reads
“seventy-five” instead of the MT’s “seventy”). Compare Frank M. Cross, Jr., The Ancient
Library of Qumran (New York: Doubleday, Anchor, 1961), pp. 184–85.
12. 4Q Paleo-Exodusm—portions of chapters 7, 29, 30, 32 (and perhaps others), written in Paleo-
Hebrew script. This MS favors the Samaritan Pentateuch as against the MT in a significant
number of instances. Compare P. J. Skehan, “Exodus in the Samaritan Recension from Qumran,”
JBL, no. 74 (1955), pages 182–87. (Photo in QHBT 275.)
13. 4Q Paleo-Exodus1, copied perhaps 100 B.C., that conforms quite closely to the MT (QHBT
276).
14. 4Q Numbers—written in square Hebrew but with Samaritan-type expansions; for instance,
after 27:23 comes an insert derived from Deuteronomy 3:21. But in other instances it agrees with
the LXX as against the Samaritan and the MT (as in 35:21).
15. 4Q Deuteronomy-A—chapter 32 (Song of Moses). This MS inclines toward the LXX as
against the MT at 32:43 (although it omits some of the LXX expansion here).
16. 4Q Jeremiahb—supports the briefer text of Jeremiah reflected in the LXX (QHBT 276).
17. 7Q Daniel—a few fragments of Daniel in 2nd century handwriting, including the transition
from Hebrew to Aramic in 2:4. (J. Trever in RQ 19 [1965] 323–26 for plates.)
18. 11Q Psalms—a manuscript of Psalms from Cave 11, copied in the formal bookhand style of
the Herodian period. The bottom third of each page has been lost. Thirty-three psalms have been
preserved, including Ps. 151 of the LXX. Four separate fragments contain portions of four more
psalms, thus making a total of thirty-seven. Represented are Pss. 93, 101–103, 105, 109, 118,
119, 121–130, 132–146, 148–151, although they do not always follow the sequence of the MT
(e.g., Ps. 105 is followed by Pss. 146, 148, 121–130). There are also about six noncanonical
poems (two of which are known in a Syriac translation) and one prose portion listing the number
of psalms written by David (cf. BASOR, no. 165, pp. 13–15). DJD (1965), J. A. Sanders.
(4QDt2, according to Sanders) (QHBT 406).
From the foregoing descriptions it becomes apparent that the Qumran materials point to three or
possibly four main manuscript families: (1) the proto-Masoretic, from which the consonantal text
of our present-day Hebrew is derived; (2) the proto-Septuagintal, the Hebrew Vorlage (preceding
model) of the original Greek translations that eventuated in the later Septuagint; (3) the proto-
Samaritan, forming the basis for the later Samaritan text of the Hebrew Pentateuch (probably
lacking the later Samaritan additions inserted in the interest of sectarian bias); (4) a neutral
family, standing more or less midway among the conflicting traditions of the first three families.
However, it should be understood that the existence of these non-Masoretic manuscript families
does not necessarily mean that the proto-Masoretic does not represent the purest textual tradition
of all. Nothing in the new discoveries from the Qumran caves endangers the essential reliability
and authority of our standard Hebrew Bible text, as represented for example in the Kittel editions
of Biblia Hebraica. They do not indicate that the Septuagint is necessarily to be exalted to a
more respected position than before as a witness to the original text, except perhaps in such
books as 1 and 2 Samuel in which, for some reason, we have an unusually defective Hebrew text
in the MT. Certainly we may expect increasing assistance from Qumran sources in regard to
Samuel, and perhaps also in some portions of Deuteronomy (particularly in those instances
where a New Testament author has quoted a verse according to the LXX wording rather than the
MT’s).7
One further remark should be made concerning the consonantal MT. When it is compared with
such examples of the proto-Masoretic tradition as 1QIsa (which contains many “extra” matres
lectionis), the MT obviously goes back to a pre-Maccabean recension of the Hebrew Bible and
points to the activity of a standardizing revision committee under official auspices, who
consulted all the earliest and best manuscripts then available (no doubt including the official
copies in the temple archives) and produced a sort of resultant text much after the manner of
Westcott and Hort or Eberhard Nestle in their New Testament editions. Unlike Westcott and
Hort, however, the Jewish scholars never took the trouble to record the prior manuscripts from
which they had worked, but simply discarded them altogether, (or consigned them to a
storeroom) feeling that their new and official text met all practical needs.
When did this hypothetical committee do its work? Some have suggested the so-called Council
of Jamnia in A.D. 90, but this hardly agrees with the evidence of texts like the Hebrew University
Isaiah Scroll, which corresponds almost letter for letter with the MT and yet dates from about 50
B.C. A more likely supposition is that the standardization of the consonantal text of the Old
Testament took place around 100 B.C.
There remains just one more pre-Christian MS to list here, one which did not come from the
Qumran caves:
19. Nash Papyrus—containing the Decalogue and the shema˓, that is, Ex. 20:1–17 and Deut.
6:4–9 (dated by Cross at 100 B.C., by Albright at 50 B.C.). This text is close to the Masoretic
tradition. It was purchased by W. L. Nash from an Egyptian antique dealer who stated that it was
discovered in the Fayyūm. It has been published by W. E Albright, “A Biblical Fragment from
the Maccabean Age: the Nash Papyrus,” JBL, no. 56 (1937), pp. 145–76. (Cf. Wurthwein, TOT,
pl.S.)

The Post-Christian Manuscripts

1. British Museum Oriental 4445—a copy of the Pentateuch, the consonantal text of which dates
from about A.D. 850, vowel points being added a century later. (Most of Genesis and
Deuteronomy are missing.)
2. Codex Cairensis (C)—containing the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets, as copied out
by Aaron ben Asher in A.D. 895. This manuscript was apparently seized by the Crusaders from
Karaite Jews in Jerusalem in A.D. 1099, but finally ended up in the possession of the Karaites in
Cairo. (Cf. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, which specifies that Aaron was the copyist rather than Moses
ben Asher, his father. Apparently it was finally transferred to Aleppo. (Cf. Ernst Wurthwein, 4th
ed., TOT, p. 34.)
3. The Aleppo Codex—containing the entire Old Testament and coming from the first half of the
10th century. Aaron ben Mosheh ben Asher added punctuation and Masora. Originally in
Jerusalem, it later went to Cairo, thence to Aleppo. It has lost about one-fourth of its contents
including almost all of the Torah, much of Canticles, Qoheleth, through Esther, Daniel and Ezra.
It is now in Jerusalem (Wurthwein TAT4 34).
4. Leningrad MS of the latter prophets, dating from A.D. 916, according to most authorities. (Cf.
Wurthwein, 14:26, where it is called P.) This codex with Babylonian punctuation was discovered
by Firkowitsch at Tschufutkale in Crimea.
5. Leningrad MS B-19A—the entire Old Testament, containing the Ben Asher Masoretic Text.
Dated at A.D. 1010 as a faithful copy of an A.D. 980 MS (which has since been lost), this MS
furnished the basis for Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, third edition (and all subsequent editions), which
is the standard text for Hebrew scholarship today. Previous to 1929 the standard text had been
the Ben Hayyim edition of 1525. (The model codex C of Ben Asher has until recently been
jealously guarded by the Sephardic synagogue in Aleppo, and its custodians refused permission
even to photograph it, much less permit its use in Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica. After having been
partially burned in an Arab riot, the Aleppo was finally acquired by the state of Israel in its
damaged condition and it will very take its place beside the Leningrad MS as the basis for
critical editions of the Hebrew Bible in the years to come.
6. The Samaritan Pentateuch. The earliest MSS of this version are still in Nablus, withheld by the
Samaritan sectarians from publication. Pietro della Valle first discovered a form of this
Samaritan text in Damascus, in 1616, and it was then published in the Paris Polyglot in 1645.
(One interesting MS more recently discovered is the Torah Finchasiye, copied in A.D. 1204, and
containing in parallel columns the Hebrew, an Aramaic Targum, and an Arabic translation, all
written in Samaritan characters.) This Samaritan version contains about 6,000 variants from the
MT, mostly mere differences in spelling. But in 1,900 instances, it agrees with the LXX as
against the MT (e.g., particularly in the ages of the patriarchs). It also contains biased sectarian
insertions, designed to show that Jehovah chose Mt. Gerizim rather than Zion, and Shechem
rather than Jerusalem as His holy city. It shows a popularizing type of text, modernizing antique
forms and simplifying difficult sentence constructions. In 1815, Wilhelm Gesenius condemned it
as nearly worthless for textual criticism. In more recent times both Geiger and Kahle have argued
that this judgment was unfair. Kenyon (BAM, pp. 49–50) gives a favorable judgment of its
worth. The standard edition was edited by August von Gall (Giessen, Germany: A. Topelmann,
1918). (It should be added that the Samaritans wrote in an alphabet quite different from square
Hebrew but descended from the old paleo-Hebrew character.) No MS of the Samaritan
Pentateuch is known to be earlier than the tenth century A.D. (E. M. Cross’s Ancient Library of
Qumran, pp. 172–73, 192–93, contains a good description and evaluation of the Samaritan text.)

Most Important Early Printed Editions of the Hebrew Bible

1. Bologna Edition of the Psalter, A.D. 1477.

2. Soncino Edition of Old Testament (vowel-pointed), 1488.
3. Second Bomberg Edition of Old Testament (text of Jacob ben Chayim, with Masora and
Rabbinical notes, under patronage of Daniel Bomberg), 1525–26. This became the basis of all
modern editions up to 1929.

The Early Versions of the Old Testament

THE GREEK VERSIONS

1. The Septuagint—translated in Alexandria 250–150 B.C. The traditional account of the origin
of this version is given in the Letter of Aristaeus to Philocrates, which originated between 130
and 100 B.C. Despite fabulous embellishments, the letter reflects an actual historical event, in
which the Torah at least (if not more of the Old Testament) was cast into Greek for the
convenience of Greek-speaking Jews who knew little Hebrew. Paul Kahle has inferred from this
letter that there were already earlier translations of the Torah which were revised by a committee
in the reign of Ptolemy II (rather than being a completely new translation made at that time). Yet
Kahle doubts that there was, apart from the Torah, any single standard Old Greek version, but
inclines to the view that it was the early church which assembled a standard text from various
Old Greek versions already current. Yet P. de Lagarde (followed by A. Rahlfs) believes there
actually was a standard, original LXX text for the whole Old Testament even from pre-Christian
times, and he has used very careful methodology in preparing a critical text for publication.
(Rahlfs’ edition is the easiest one to obtain for study purposes today.) The following is a list of
the most important manuscripts or manuscript fragments of the Septuagint.
a. Rylands Papyrus 458, containing portions of Deut. 23–28 (150 B.C.), has been preserved to us
in a mummy wrapping. Kenyon (BAM, p. 63) states that it tends to favor A (Codex
Alexandrinus) and Theta (Codex Washingtoniensis I, a sixth century MS) as against B (Codex
Vaticanus).
b. From Qumran Four come the following cave fragments: a Leviticus fragment on papyrus
which agrees well with the standard LXX text, but uses IAO instead of kyrios for “Jehovah”;
another Leviticus fragment on leather which contains 26:2–16, with ten variations from the later
LXX, and five other variants where the LXX MSS are themselves in disagreement; a Numbers
fragment on leather, containing 3:3–4:14. In quite a few instances it uses a different Greek word
from the LXX, but apparently for the same Hebrew word in the original. (These are all discussed
by Burrows, MLDSS, pp. 136–37, and are apparently assigned by him to first century B.C.) D.
Barthelemy reports (in “Chainon manquant de l’histoire de la Septante” [1952] in QHBT 128)
that in August 1952, the Ta’amireh tribesmen discovered in a new cave (Wadi Khabra [QHBT
269] on Nahal Heber) of the Judean Desert a scroll from the Second Revolt (second half of the
first century A.D.), in fragments, all from the Minor Prophets: Micah (4:3–7 transcribed on p.
129), Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk (quote from Hab. 1:14–2:5, 13–15 on p. 134), Zephaniah, and
Zechariah (from the end of the first century A.D.).
c. The Chester Beatty Papyri were found at Oxyrynchus in Egypt; #VI, ca. A.D. 150, is a papyrus
codex containing portions of Numbers and Deuteronomy, tending to agree with A and Theta
against B; #VII, ca. A.D. 230, contains portions of Isaiah with glosses in Fayyumic Coptic; #V,
ca. A.D. 270, contains portions of Gen. (chaps. 8, 24, 25, 30–46); #IV, ca. A.D. 350, contains Gen.
9:1–44:22.
d. Papyrus 911, from Egypt, dated about the end of the third century A.D., written in a cursive
uncial hand, contains fragments of Genesis 1–35, in a pre-Hexaplaric text showing affinities to
MSS E and D (i.e., the Bodleian Genesis of the tenth century, at Oxford, and the Cotton Genesis
of the fifth century, at the British Museum).
e. Freer Greek Manuscript V of the minor prophets (W) in Washington, comprising 33 papyrus
leaves, dates from the second half of the third century A.D., written in an Egyptian hand, and
containing a fairly complete text of all the prophets except Hosea. The text is of pre-Hexaplaric
type, and among the uncial manuscripts it is somewhat closer to Q and Aleph than to the others.
Yet it bears noteworthy affinities to such minuscule MSS as 407, 198, 233, 534, and 410—which
likewise show a pre-Hexaplaric type of text.
f. Origen’s Hexapla, was written about A.D. 240. Origen lived A.D. 185–254. Because of the
many divergences in the MSS of the LXX then current, and because he had noticed that some
portions of the Hebrew text were missing in the LXX, Origen determined to draw up a more
satisfactory Greek Old Testament in the following way. He copied out six parallel colunms
(hexapla means sixfold) consisting of (1) the Hebrew original, (2) the Hebrew transliterated into
Greek letters, (3) the literal Greek translation of Aquila, (TAT, 4th ed., p. 58), (4) the idiomatic
Greek translation of Symmachus, (5) the Septuagint itself, and (6) the Greek translation of
Theodotion. Where sections appeared in the LXX which were not in the Hebrew, he inserted an
obelus (horizontal diacritical stroke) and closed with a metobelus (a stroke with a dot or short
cross stroke). Where a portion in the Hebrew was not in the LXX, he inserted a Greek translation
from one of the other colunms, setting it off with an asteriscus (a cross with intervening dots) and
a metobelus.
Origen’s original Hexapla was apparently never copied out for publication; it was far too
voluminous to be marketable. But the contents of the fifth column (the LXX plus additions) were
later published by Eusebius and Pamphilus, carefully including the diacritical symbols. A copy
of this has been preserved to us in the Codex Sarravianus (G), dating from the fourth or fifth
century, and containing portions of Genesis through Judges. Another witness seems to be Codex
Marchalianus (Q) from the sixth century, which contains portions of Isaiah through Malachi with
Hexaplaric readings in the margin. (See Wurthwein, TOT, p. 53.) No other considerable section
has been preserved of this edition in Greek, but fortunately it was translated into Syriac by order
of Bishop Paul of Tella in 616 (cf. see “Syriac Versions” below) and some MSS of this have
been preserved, with the all-important diacritical marks appearing in the Syriac text.
g. The Hesychian Recension (a revision of the Septuagintal text made in Egypt by Bishop
Hesychius, martyred in A.D. 311) does not survive in any early MSS except possibly Q but it is
thought to be preserved in a later form in minuscules 49, 68, and some others, and in the Coptic
and Ethiopic versions generally, as well as in the Itala or “Old Latin.”
h. The Lucianic Recension (made by Lucian of Samosata and Antioch, also martyred in A.D.
311) has likewise survived only in later MSS, notably Codex Venetus (N), an eighth-century MS
containing portions of Exodus and Leviticus. Kahle feels that the appearance of some
characteristically “Lucianic” readings in MSS prior to Lucian’s lifetime—especially in certain
Old Latin MSS—indicates the earlier existence of an “Ur-Lucian” text (Handschriften aus der
Hohle [Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1951], p. 34).
i. Codex Vaticanus (B) (A.D. 325–350) is a magnificent MS which contains most of the New
Testament as well as the Old Testament. This represents a pre-Origenic text (even though copied
out later than the Hexapla) of the LXX. One book (Daniel), however, is not from the LXX but
from Theodotion, (which is much closer to the Hebrew MT than the so-called LXX version of
Daniel).
j. Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph) (ca. A.D. 375–400) is another splendid MS, which also contains the
complete New Testament, although portions of the Old Testament are missing. In part it
resembles the Vaticanus, and in part the Alexandrinus.
k. Codex Alexandrinus (A) (ca. A.D. 450) is also an important New Testament text. It shows
some affinities to the Hexaplaric, although basically it is an Egyptian type of text.
The LXX varies greatly in quality and value from book to book. The Pentateuch was translated
with greater accuracy, for the most part, than were the other books of the Old Testament,
probably because it had to serve as a sort of Greek Targum at synagogue worship services for the
Jewish congregations in Egypt. The former prophets (i.e., Joshua through 2 Kings) and Psalms
are rendered with considerable fidelity to their Hebrew Vorlage, generally speaking. In the case
of the latter prophets (Isaiah through Malachi), the tendency is more definitely toward
paraphrase, and the more difficult Hebrew passages are often inexpertly handled. The remaining
poetic books (apart from Psalms) show a similar tendency toward freedom in rendering.
In considering the value of the LXX for the textual emendation of any particular book, we must
first of all study the character of the translation as a whole, so far as that particular book is
concerned. If it seems to be quite paraphrastic in its translation technique, its usefulness for text
amendment is very much less than if it tends, on the whole, to be quite literal. If, on the other
hand, it makes consistently good sense throughout the book, and evidences a good grasp of
Hebrew, it deserves respect. Yet it must be remembered that the LXX text has come down to us
in various and divergent forms (such as to give rise to suspicions of a quite heterogeneous
origin), and betrays a rather low standard of scribal fidelity in its own transmission. Greek
scribes did not bind themselves to the same stringent rules of literal and meticulous accuracy as
were embraced by the Jewish scribes of the period of the Sopherim (see chap. 4, section on “The
Work of the Sopherim”).
One significant example of the perils of reconstructing a Hebrew Vorlage on the basis of the
LXX translation has come to light with the discovery of a sizable portion of the Hebrew original
of Ecclesiasticus (The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira) in the Apocrypha. Previous to this discovery
(in 1897) textual critics had conjectured a number of emendations in the Greek text in order to
bring it more closely in line with the presumed Hebrew original. But when this portion of the
recovered Hebrew original was published (by Cowley and Neubauer), it was discovered that the
Greek translator had dealt very freely with his original, and had in the interests of a more
Hellenistic viewpoint taken considerable liberties (even though the Hebrew original had been
composed by his own grandfather). Kenyon remarks: “The moral to be drawn from this
discovery is consequently one of caution in assuming that variations (even considerable ones) in
the Septuagint from the Masoretic Hebrew necessarily imply a different text. They may do so, no
doubt; but we must be prepared to make considerable allowances for liberty of paraphrase and
for actual mistakes, especially in the case of books which are likely to have been the latest to be
translated.”
2. The later Greek versions
a. Aquila’s Version was written by Aquila, who came from Pontus. He is said to have become a
proselyte to Judaism, and a pupil of Rabbi Aquiba. His work was published about A.D. 130,
apparently, and proved to be of a strictly literal character. He endeavored to adhere to one
standard Greek equivalent for each Hebrew word, whether or not it made good sense in Greek in
each context. (Thus he rendered the accusative particle eth by the Greek preposition syn,
“with,” governing the accusative case instead of the usual dative.) Barthelemy suggests that
Aquiba’s version depended on the proto-Theodotion “kaige” recension Of A.D. 30–50 (QHBT
270). Aquila’s translation has survived only in quotations and fragments, especially from Kings
and Psalms 90–103.
b. Symmachus’ Version (perhaps A.D. 170) rendered the Old Testament into good idiomatic
Greek, although still adhering to high standards of accuracy. Symmachus was an Ebionite,
according to Jerome, although Epiphanius reports that he was a Samaritan convert to Judaism.
Unfortunately there are only a few fragments which have survived; they are collected in Field’s
edition (see footnote 10).
c. Theodotion’s Version (ca. A.D.180 or 190) was actually not a fresh, new translation, but a
revision of an earlier Greek version from probably A.D. 30–50, whether of the LXX or of some
other is much disputed. The fact remains that readings of the “Theodotion” type are found in
MSS earlier than Theodotion’s time (e.g., in some New Testament quotations from the Old
Testament, in the Epistle of Barnabas, and in the Epistles of Clement and Hermas). Kenyon and
Kahle incline to the view that what Theodotion revised was a non-Septuagintal text. In the case
of Daniel, the Theodotion translation altogether displaced the original LXX version of that book,
for the very good reason that Theodotion was faithful to the form of the Hebrew original current
in the early Christian centuries. (The original LXX Daniel has been preserved only in a single
late minuscule, MS 88, and in the recently discovered Chester Beatty Papyri IX-X.)
In our present century, George Lamsa, who came from an Aramaic speaking community in the
Middle East, has advanced the theory that much of the New Testament was originally composed
in Aramaic which was subsequently translated into the Greek New Testament that we now have.
There is, however, no evidence to support this claim and it is not taken seriously by New
Testament scholarship.

THE ARAMAIC TARGUMS

During the Babylonian Exile, the Jewish people began to forsake their ancestral Hebrew more
and more for the Aramaic tongue, which had become the international language for diplomacy
and commerce and the principal medium of communication between the Persian government and
its subjects after the establishment of the Persian empire. As Jewish congregations became more
uncertain of their Hebrew (although Hebrew never ceased to be studied and spoken by the
learned class in Palestine right up to the second century A.D.), it became necessary for an
interpreter to repeat to them in Aramaic the message which had just been read in the synagogue
service from their Hebrew Bible. But this interpreter (methurgemān, Aramaic) would not limit
himself always to mere translation, but would often (especially in the case of the prophets)
explain the message by a paraphrase, designed to show in what way the utterance of the original
was to be understood. After centuries of oral tradition, especially after the banishment of the
Jews from Palestine in A.D. 138, it seemed wise to commit this Aramaic paraphrase to writing as
a targum (interpretation). This may have occurred as early as Rabbi Aqiba.
There was a tradition that the oral Targum began in Ezra’s time (Neh. 8:7–8), but there is no
evidence of a written Targum until A.D. 200 or thereabouts. An entirely different Targum of Job
was discovered in 11Q dating back to 100 B.C. It is in fragmentary condition, but enough of it
has been preserved to determine its distinctive characteristics. The value of the Targums for
textual criticism is limited by the fact that their Hebrew Vorlage was very nearly the same as that
of our “received text” (i.e., the second Bomberg edition). Only occasionally do they betray any
divergences which are explicable only on the basis of a variant wording in their Hebrew original.
Therefore their value is greater for the history of interpretation than for textual criticism as such.
1. The Targum of Onkelos on the Torah (coming from third century A.D., possibly as a recension
of an earlier paraphrase) was produced by the Jewish scholarly circles in Babylon. (It is not
quoted from by extant Palestinian writings any earlier than A.D. 1000.) Traditionally it was
assigned to a certain Onkelos, who was supposed to be the same native of Pontus who composed
the Aquila Greek translation (in other words, Onkelos equals Aquila). But the Eastern origin and
the later time of composition militate against this tradition. At any rate, Onkelos, whoever he
was, adheres very closely to the Hebrew original in almost every passage except in the poetic
chapters of the Pentateuch.
2. The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel on the Prophets (i.e., Joshua to Kings, Isaiah to Malachi)
was composed in the fourth century A.D., and likewise in Babylonian circles. It is far more
paraphrastic and free in its rendering of the Hebrew text than in Onkelos.
3. The Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on the Torah comes from about A.D. 650 and consists of a
mixture of Onkelos with Midrashic materials. It is of small critical value.
4. The Jerusalem Targum on the Torah comes from about A.D. 700. This too is of little critical
value.

THE LATIN VERSIONS

1. The Old Latin or Itala Version (composed during the second century, completed about A.D.
200) was not a direct translation from the Hebrew but was merely a Latin translation from the
Septuagint. Hence the Itala is of value only as a “daughter translation”; it helps only in
ascertaining the earlier text of the LXX. This version, which existed in many and divergent
forms, seems to have arisen in North Africa. Subsequent to the appearance of Jerome’s
translations, it fell into disuse and finally was abandoned, except in the case of the Psalter (as
indicated in the next paragraph). It has survived only in fragments (apart from the psalms
themselves), and these were collected and published by Sabatier in 1739. Among the
manuscripts are the following.
a. Wurzburg Palimpsest Codex, coming from about A.D. 450, contains fragments of the Torah
and prophets.
b. Lyons Codex, from about A.D. 650, contains fragments from Genesis to Judges.
2. Jerome’s Vulgate (A.D. 390–404) began in 382 when Jerome was commissioned by Pope
Damasus to revise the Itala with reference to the Greek Septuagint (for even though Jerome was
already versed in Hebrew, Damasus did not at first intend anything so radical as a new Latin
translation from the Hebrew original). About the same time that Jerome’s translation of the
Gospels was ready (for he was working with New Testament revision also), he produced his
earliest Psalter, which became known as the Roman Psalter (because it was adopted for use at St.
Peter’s in Rome). It involved only a slight revision of the Itala, bringing it more closely into line
with the LXX. Later (387–390), Jerome produced a second translation, known as the Gallican
Psalter, on the basis of the fifth column of Origen’s Hexapla. This was originally published with
diacritical marks, but these were eventually dropped, and it became the standard translation of
the Psalms for the Latin church from that day until this. But in the later years of Jerome’s
translation activity, he perfected his Hebrew by extended residence in Bethlehem, studying under
Jewish rabbis. The result was his so-called Hebrew Psalter, which was a fresh and somewhat
more accurate rendering from the Hebrew text then current in Palestine.” Between 390 and 404,
Jerome produced the rest of the Old Testament (including the Apocrypha, although he
questioned its canonicity). This received more or less official acceptance as the new,
authoritative Latin Bible for the Western church. Over the subsequent centuries, it was published
in parallel columns with the Itala (from whence it received some corruption). Finally, about the
middle of the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent appointed a commission to produce an
expurgated edition of the Vulgate, and this indirectly resulted in the Sixtine Edition, which was
published in 1590, followed by a Clementine amended edition in 1592.

THE SYRIAC VERSIONS

Contemporaneously with the formation of the Aramaic Targum of Onkelos, the Syrian Christians
were beginning to produce a more or less standard translation of the Bible into their Eastern
Aramaic dialect. (The Aramaic spoken by the Jews of Palestine and Babylon was of the Western
type, and was written in the same square Hebrew characters as the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves. But the Christian Aramaic speakers adopted a quite dissimilar alphabet of their own,
bearing some superficial resemblances to Arabic script.) In the case of the New Testament
translations, it is obvious that they have been derived from the Greek original; they even abound
in Greek loanwords which have been taken over from the Greek text. It was not until later that
the tradition sprang up among the Syrian Christians that their gospels were really the original
from which the Greek was translated (on the specious ground that the mother tongue of Christ
and the apostles was Aramaic).
1. The Peshitta (i.e., “the simple”) Syriac Old Testament must have been composed in the
second or third century A.D., since it was quoted already in fourth-century Syriac writings. At
first the Old Testament portion was translated from the Hebrew original, but later it underwent
some revision in order to make it conform more closely to the Septuagint. Therefore its textual
witness is ambiguous and it must be used with care and discrimination for purposes of textual
criticism. The Peshitta achieved an official status for the Syriac-speaking church when it was
revised and published under the authority of Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (ca. A.D. 400). As to its
contents, the Peshitta in its earliest form lacked the Apocrypha (indicating that it had been
translated from the Hebrew canon rather than from the LXX). It also lacked Chronicles, although
this was later added, in the form of a translation from the targum of Chronicles. Later still the
greater part of the Apocrypha was added (except Tobit and 1 Esdras).
2. The Syriac Hexapla is the only other extant Old Testament translation. As explained above, it
consisted of a translation of the fifth column of Origen’s Hexapla, and was published under the
sponsorship of Bishop Paul of Tella in A.D. 616. The extant portions of it were published in part
by A. M. Ceriani and in part by P. de Lagarde. The Codex Mediolanensis, containing 2 Kings,
Isaiah, the Minor Prophets, Lamentations, and the poetical books except for the Psalms, was
published by H. Middeldorpf in Berlin, 1835.
In our present century, George Lamsa, who came from an Aramaic speaking community in the
Middle East, has advanced the theory that much of the New Testament was originally composed
in Aramaic which was subsequently translated into the Greek New Testament that we now have.
There is, however, no evidence to support this claim and it is not taken seriously by New
Testament scholarship.

OTHER VERSIONS
1. The first group of translations that are neither Greek nor Hebrew are the Coptic versions.
Coptic was a vernacular descended from the language of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, although by
Christian times it had borrowed many Greek words and was written in an adapted form of the
Greek alphabet. Five or six distinct dialects of Coptic were spoken, but the Bible translations are
mostly either in Sahidic (a southern dialect) or in Bohairic (spoken in Memphis and the Delta).
Of the two, the Sahidic is earlier, going back possibly to the second century A.D., although the
earliest extant manuscripts date from the fourth century. The Bohairic is later, and somewhat
more of it has survived (although neither the Sahidic Old Testament nor the Bohairic is
complete). They markedly differ from each other in diction and show every evidence of
complete independence from each other. Yet both go back generally to the Hesychian Recension
of the LXX. They were translated from the Greek, not directly from the Hebrew.
2. The Ethiopic Version was probably made in the fourth century, although the earliest extant
MSS are from the thirteenth century. It also is a daughter translation, either from the LXX or (as
others think) from the Coptic or Arabic.
3. Arabic translations never became standardized into one authoritative version, but most of them
were made from the LXX. The Arabic translation of Saadia Gaon forms a notable exception;
being a Jew, he translated directly from the Hebrew text (ca. 930).
4. The Armenian Version seems to have received its earliest form in the early fifth century. It
shows some influence by the Peshitta.
5. Of the Gothic Version by Wulfilas (ca. A.D. 330), little remains of the Old Testament. The
Codex Argenteus contains only a portion of Neh. 5–7 and nothing more.

THE POLYGLOTS
A word should be said about the great polyglots which began to appear about the time of the
Reformation. The polyglots were elaborate and expensive printed editions in which the Hebrew
text and all of the available ancient versions were printed in parallel columns.
1. The Complutensian Polyglot was the earliest (so named from Complutum, or Alcala, in Spain,
where it was prepared). It came out under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes and was published
under the papal sanction in 1522 (although it had already been run off the press in 1514–1517).
The Old Testament portion appeared in the first of its six volumes.
2. The Antwerp Polyglot (under the patronage of Philip II of Spain) came out in 1569–1572 in
eight volumes. It added to the contents of the Complutensian Polyglot the Targum of Jonathan on
the prophets and also a Targum on the Hagiographa.
3. The Paris Polyglot, which appeared in 1645, followed the text of the Antwerp Edition, but
added also the Samaritan Pentateuch and Samaritan Aramaic Version, the Peshitta, and an
Arabic version.
4. The London Polyglot added to all of this the Itala, an Ethiopic version of Psalms and Song of
Solomon, and the Apocrypha (in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic), the Targum of Psuedo-
Jonathan on the Pentateuch, and even a Persian version. It was edited in six volumes by Bishop
Brian Walton in 1656–1657.

4
Lower Criticism of the Old Testament
IN CONTRADISTINCTION to higher criticism, which deals with questions of the authorship and
integrity of the text of Bible books, the science of lower criticism (or textual criticism) is
concerned with the task of restoring the original text on the basis of the various copies which
have been preserved to us. It attempts to work through the evidence provided by the variants, or
different readings, where the surviving manuscripts disagree with each other, and by the use of a
scientific system, arrive at what was most probably the wording used by the original author.
 Types of Manuscript Error

It is a well-known fact that certain characteristic types of error are apt to accompany the copying
out of any written document. Sometimes the copyist would substitute a word of similar sound for
the one used in the original (e.g., whole for hole, or there for their); he might inadvertently write
the same word twice (e.g., and and); or he might switch the order of letters (e.g., seige instead of
siege). The types of error which could be listed in this connection are very numerous indeed.
They can usually be detected from the context itself, and the intelligent reader can easily tell
what the copyist really meant to write.
But there are some types of scribal inadvertence which could be explained in any one of several
different ways, and some standard method or system is needed to arrive at that correction which
is most likely to have been the word or expression used in the original. In the transmission of the
sacred text of Holy Scripture, we find that the same types of scribal slip as appear in secular
works have crept into the copies of Bible books. As has already been suggested, it would take
nothing short of a miracle to make possible an infallible copy of an infallible original. God has
not seen fit to perform such miracles as the Scriptures have been handed down from copy to
copy between the time of original composition and the invention of the printing press. There is
no particular reason why He should have. Therefore we have to deal intelligently with the
problems presented by transmissional errors and deal with them in as objective and systematic
fashion as possible. This, then, is the special task of biblical lower criticism.

12 MOST COMMON MANUSCRIPT ERRORS

Haplography—Singular entry of a letter which should have been written twice.

Dittography—Writing twice what should have been written once.
Metathesis—Transposing of letters or words.
Fusion—Combining all or part of two words into a single word.
Fission—Division of a single word into two words.
Homophony—Substitution of one homonym for another.
Misreading similar letters—Confusion of one letter for another of similar shape.
Homoeoteleuton—Omission of an intervening passage due to having a similar
ending (such as between two sentences).
Homoeoarkton—Omission of an intervening passage from the beginning of two
similar sentences.
Accidental omission—Loss of a single word or letter.
Vowel misreading—Misreading vowel letters as consonants.
Vowel point variations—Misreading a weak vowel as an actual consonant or, a
discrepancy in added vowel points giving a change in word meaning.
First of all it is necessary to analyze the various types of error which copyists were apt to
commit, and observe the contexts in which such errors were most likely to occur. This is
necessary preparation before proceeding to their correction. Some of the commonest classes of
error are listed below, and are illustrated for the most part from the First Qumran Isaiah Scroll
(lQIsa).
1. Haplography—the writing of a letter, syllable, or word only once, when it should have been
written more than once. For example, Isa. 26:3, BeKāBāṮeHåuW (or BiṬeḤuW), meaning “in thee
they trusted” (or “in thee; trust ye”), instead of BeKā BāṬuWaḤ BiṬeḤuW (“trusting in thee; trust
ye”). As written in consonants only (as of course all Hebrew was before A.D. 800), it would be
merely the difference between the scroll’s BK BṬḤW and the MT’s BK BṬWḤ BṬḤW. Such
haplography has probably crept into the MT of Judg. 20:13, BNYMN (“Benjamin”) being written
for BNY BNYMN (“the children of Benjamin”). The latter reading has been preserved by the
LXX, and indicates the original wording (as we can tell from the plural verb ˓ābû which goes
with this noun, for a simple BNYMN would demand a singular verb). The accidental omission of
a letter is also known as haplography even when no doubling is called for. For example, the
Isaiah Scroll reads BḤZQT YD (“with strength of hand”) in Isaiah 8:11, instead of the MT’s
BḤZQT HYD (“with the strength of the hand”).
2. Dittography—the writing twice of that which should have been written but once. For example,
in Isa. 30:30, HŠMY˓ HŠ MY˓(“cause to be heard cause to be heard”) instead of the MT’s simple
HŠMY˓ (“cause to be heard”). Again, in Ezek. 48:16 the MT reads, ḤMŠ, HMŠ M˒WT (“five five
hundred”) instead of the proper ḤMŠM˒WT (“five hundred”).
3. Metathesis—reversing the proper position of letters or words. For example, Isa. 32:19 HY˓R
(“the forest”) instead of the MT’s H˓YR (“the city”)—which alone makes good sense in the
context. Again, in Ezek. 42:16 the MT consonantal text has ḤMŠ˓MWT QNYM (“five cubits
reeds”) instead of the obvious ḤMŠ M˒WT QNYM (“five hundred reeds”)—the proper correction
having been indicated by the Masoretes in their apparatus (see under “Masoretes,” pp. 67–68).
4. Fusion—the combining of two separate words into one. Wurthwein cites Amos 6:12 where
BBQRYM (“with oxen”) probably stands for an original BBQR YM (“With oxen the sea”—i.e.,
“Shall one plough the sea with oxen?”). Rypins cites Isa. 3:15 MLKM (according to the
consonantal text of the MT), which would mean “their king”; but what the context calls for (and
what the Masoretes amend to) is MH LKM (“What is the matter with you?”). In this connection
note that Jerome, following the interpretation of the LXX, understood the term L˓Z˒ZL (for
Azazel) in Lev. 16:8 as a case of fusion for L˓Z˓ZL (“for a goat of sending away”—which
certainly makes excellent sense in the context, and does away with a bothersome proper name,
Azazel, otherwise unknown in pre-Christian times).
5. Fission—the dividing up of a single word into two words. For example, in Isa. 2:20, the MT’s
LḤPR PRWT (“to a hole of rats”) should be amended to the scroll’s LḤPRPRYM (“to the shrew-
mice”), as the LXX shows (which simply transcribed the word as pharpharōth, without
attempting to translate it). Rypins cites the MT’s KY DRKYK (“because thy ways”) in Ezek. 7:4,
arguing that it originally read KDRKYK (“according to thy ways”). Yet this last emendation lacks
any strong support.
6. Homophony—the substitution of one homonym for another. For example, frequently we find
LW (“to him”) subsituted for L˒ (“not”). Thus in Isa. 9:3, both the MT and the scroll, read,
HRBYT HGWY L˒ HGDLT HŚMḤH (“Thou hast multiplied the people; thou hast not multiplied
the joy”), where far better sense is obtained from HRBYT HGWY LW HGDLT HSMḤH (“Thou
hast increased the people, thou hast increased the joy for him”). The confusion arose from the
fact that both L˒ (“not”) and LW (“for him”) were pronounced lō. The second reading is the one
endorsed by the qerê.
7. Misreading of similar appearing letters. From 600 B.C. onward, D (daleth) and R (rēsh)
resembled each other closely enough so that they were often confused, especially in proper
names. Thus the “Dodanim” of Gen. 10:4 appears as “Rodanim” in 1 Chron. 1:7—which is
thought by many to be the better reading, since it probably refers to the Rhodians. Again, W
(waw) and Y (yodh) were written very similarly from 150 B.C. and onward, and even in the Isaiah
Scroll they are often difficult to distinguish. Where the MT reads WD˓W (“and know ye”) the
scroll has YD˓W (“let them know”) in Isa. 33:13. One interesting example of this occurs in Acts
7:43, which quotes the LXX spelling of Raiphan as the name of the idol, whereas the MT of
Amos 5:26 (from which this was quoted) spells it Chiun. How could this confusion have arisen?
In mere consonants Chiun appears as KYWN; Raiphan would be RYPN. However the fifth
century B.C., as the Elephantine Papyri testify, the shape of K (‫ )ע‬was very similar to R (‫)ר‬, and
W (‫ )ו‬greatly resembled P (‫)פ‬. In that period, then, a copy of Amos would have presented a name
which could be read either as KYWN or as RYPN. (From the Akkadian Kaiwanu, the name of the
god who presided over the planet Saturn, we gather that the MT has preserved the more original
spelling in this case.) As for Stephen (whose speech is reported in Acts 7), the verse he quoted is
recorded by Luke in the LXX version, which was the only form of the Old Testament accessible
to his Greek-speaking readers.
8. Homoeoteleuton—the omission of an intervening passage because the copyist’s eye had
skipped from one ending to a second similar ending. Homoeoteleuton is Greek for “similar
ending.” An example of this in the scroll is found in Isa. 4:5 (all the words omitted being
contained between the parentheses): WBR˒ YHWH … ˓NN (YWMM W˒ŠN WNGH˒ LHBH LYLH
KY ˓L KL KBWD ḤPH WSKH THYH LṢL) YWMM MḤRB. From this it will be observed that the
eye of the scribe skipped from the first (“by day”) to the second resulting in the loss of thirteen
words in between (cf. Ps. 145:13b) from the LXX.
9. Homoeoarkton—In 1 Sam. 14:41 the LXX has two occurrences of “O Lord God of Israel,”
with twenty-five words between them. The MT lacks all of these words and has only one “O
Lord God of Israel.” The only fair conclusion is that the MT dropped these words by
homoeoteleuton (or homoeoarkton—similar beginning), rather than that the LXX inserted all
these extra words from some unknown source. (Cf. Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica, 12 ed., p. 426.)
10. Accidental omission of words in situations where no repetition is involved. One celebrated
instance is 1 Sam. 13:1, where the MT reads, “Saul was … year(s) old when he began to reign.”
Unfortunately textual criticism does not help us, for both the LXX and the other versions have no
numeral here. Apparently the correct number fell out so early in the history of the transmission
of this particular text that it was already lost before the third century B.C.
11. Misreading vowel letters as consonants. The Hebrew letters ˒ (˒aleph), H (he), W (waw), and
Y (yodh) were true consonants only, in the earlier stages of Hebrew writing. But gradually they
came to be used to indicate the presence of certain vowels, and when so used, the ˒, H, W, or Y
was not to be pronounced at all, but was simply a mater lectionis (indicating a pure-long vowel).
In the Maccabean period we find that the use of these vowel letters greatly expanded, probably
because the correct pronunciation of Hebrew was becoming uncertain to a people who were by
now using Aramaic for all ordinary purposes. Most of the earlier Qumran MSS show this
proliferation of matres lectionis. In the first century B.C. the Sopherim (see section on
“Sopherim” in this chapter) reverted to the less encumbered spelling of the older period, and
largely restricted the vowel letters to indicate “pure-long” vowels only (rather than “tone-long”
or short vowels, as the second century B.C. scrolls often did). But occasionally some of the
superfluous matres lectionis were preserved in cases where, if understood as true consonants,
they made a substantial difference in meaning. An instance in point, according to Wurthwein, is
Amos 2:7 where the MT’s HŠPYM (haššō˒apɩ̂ m (“who trample upon”) has replaced the original
HŠPYM, haššā˒apɩ̂ m (from the verb šûp, “crush”).
12. Variants based on the vowel points only. It should be understood that the vowel points were
not inserted by the Masoretes to make the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible accurate by
providing vowel sounds until after A.D. 600. In most cases we can assume that the oral tradition
which was followed by the Masoretic scribes is correct unless there are strong indications in the
context that suggest they were in error. One interesting example of this has to do with Ps. 2:9
where we have consonants that could indicate the verb “to shepherd” or the verb “to smash”
depending on how we vowel them; i.e., terō˓ēm from rā˓a˓ (“smash”) seems to be confirmed by
the second half of the verse: “You will dash them to pieces like pottery.” On the other hand, the
LXX reads poimaneis (“You will rule”), implying the vowel pointing tir˓ēm from rā˓ah. This is
confirmed by the word for “rod”, which is šēbet, the regular word for the scepter of a king. It is
highly significant that this verse is quoted in Rev. 2:27: “He will rule (or “pasture”) them with an
iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
Other interesting examples may be found in Isa. 9:6, Mic. 5:1, Ps. 22:9, and Ps. 19:2. A
discussion of these may be found in EBD, pp. 41–42.

The Canons of Textual Criticism

Certain standard criteria have been set up by textual critics to help in arriving at an intelligent
choice among two or more competing variants. It often happens that two or more of these rules
or “canons” apply in a given situation and tip the scale of preference in opposite directions. Thus,
one of two readings may conform more perfectly to the known style and diction of the author,
whereas the other may be the more difficult (Canon #6 vs. Canon #2). Or else the older reading
(Canon #1) may at the same time be the longer reading (Canon #3). In such cases the rule of
thumb is to give priority to the canons in the order of their listing below. But this method must be
applied with great discrimination and with due consideration of all the special circumstances that
might weaken the case for the particular variant which the prior canon might seem to favor. For
example, a rigid application of Canon #1 would automaticafly give preference to the Dead Sea
Scroll of Isaiah as over against the MT in every case of disagreement. But a careful study of the
entire scroll indicates that the copyist followed far lower standards of scribal fidelity than those
of the official recension on which the MT itself was based. Or again, a very old copy may in turn
be derived from an earlier exemplar which had suffered gaps or wormholes, or the like. These
would betray themselves through occasional loss of words or conjectures which markedly depart
from other textual traditions. But with due respect to these special complicating factors, the
canons listed below will serve as a reliable guide to the textual critic.
 CANONS OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM

The preferred reading is the one that …

• Is older

• Is more dificult

• Is shorter

• Best explains variants

• Has the widest geographical support

• Conforms to the style and diction of the author

• Reflects no doctrinal bias

Canon #1: The older reading is to be preferred. As just indicated, the older manuscript is not
necessarily the most carefully copied manuscript; this canon applies where the older manuscript
is at least as reliable as the later, and equally free of oddities or peculiarities. An example would
be Isa. 61:1 from 1QIsa (2nd cent. B.C.) which appears in the first Qumran scroll which appears
as PQḤQWḤ whereas the MT reads PQḤ-QWḤ. The MT is to be preferred as more reliable. The
older MS is not necessarily the most carefully copied MS. This canon applies when the older MS
is at least as reliable as the later MS and equally free of oddities or peculiarities.
The MT is to be preferred because it shows a doubling of the second and third radical which is
common in Hebrew. The Qumran reading has the difficulty of presenting a pattern which is
otherwise not known in Hebrew.
Canon #2: The more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) is to be preferred. This is because a
scribe was more apt to simplify or clarify the wording of his original than he was to make it
harder for his reading public to understand. If he left a rare word or difficult expression or
irregular grammatical form, it must be because he found it that way in his model. This does not
apply, of course, if the difficulty involved arose from ignorance or inadvertence on the part of the
copyist himself. Nor does it apply if the difficult reading does not make sense at all, or utterly
contradicts the author’s meaning as expressed elsewhere. Isa. 53:3 in the MT reads WYDW ḤLY
The Isaiah scroll read WYWD ḤWLY. The Qumran reading would be more easily expected than
that of the MT. The Qumran translates “one who is acquainted with illness,” the passive
participle. Although the MT is less likely to be expected, it is probably the original intent of the
author because he would be less likely to change it from the Qumran form to the MT form than
vice versa.
Canon #3: The shorter reading is to be preferred. This is because copyists were more apt to insert
new material than they were to leave out any of the sacred text they had before them. In cases of
haplography or homoeoteleuton, of course, this canon does not apply.
Canon #4: The reading which best explains all the variants is to be preferred. For example, Ps.
22:16 (Matt. 22:17) reads K˒RY YDY WRGLY, which, as pointed by the Masoretes (Kā˒ ˓RiY),
means “like the lion my hands and my feet” (“they have pierced my hands and my feet,” KJV).
The Hebrew column in the Complutensian Polyglot reads K˒RW, vocalized as Ka˒RuW, which
means “they have bored through.” Which reading best explains the variants (in this case, the
reading in the versions)? Probably the second reading, for the LXX, the Peshitta, the Vulgate,
and even Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter all read, “They have dug through” or “pierced.” Symmachus
rendered it as “seeking to bind” (which does not clearly favor either K˒RY or K˒RW.
Canon #5: The reading with the widest geographical support is to be preferred. Thus a reading
favored by the LXX, the Itala, and the Coptic will not be as well attested as one in which the
Peshitta and the Samaritan agree. This is because the Itala and Coptic are daughter translations
of the LXX and all belong to the Alexandrian recension, whereas the Peshitta and the Samaritan
represent somewhat different textual traditions. Similarly, the likelihood is great that a variant
attested by such diverse traditions as the Samaritan and the LXX is closer to the original than the
MT reading. For example, in Num. 22:35, both the Samaritan and the LXX agree on TŠMR
LDBR (“thou shalt be careful to say”), whereas the MT reads simply TDBR (“thou shalt speak”).
Of course Canon #3 might seem to favor the MT here, but the presence of this same locution in
widely separated traditions is hard to explain as a later insertion which by coincidence turned out
to be the same.
Canon #6: The reading which most conforms to the style and diction of the author is to be
preferred. This is a mere statement of likelihood, of course. But where two variants present
themselves, each equally possible in the context, but one conforming to the author’s usual way of
expressing that type of thought, and the other sounding a bit different from the style he uses
elsewhere, the former is to be preferred. Yet it should be added that textual critics of the slash-
and-slice school have greatly overused this canon in a most inadmissible way, and have imposed
upon passages that do not for some reason suit them a rather subjective and arbitrary judgment as
to what the ancient author could or could not have said.
Canon #7: The reading which reflects no doctrinal bias is to be preferred. For example, we know
from the Targums and from the LXX that later Jewish thought shied away from any humanlike
representations of God, or from locutions which implied that He had a body, parts, or passions. A
variant which tends to minimize this factor is known as an “antianthropomorphism.” For
example, in Isa. 1:12 we find in the consonantal text (the kethib) the word LR˒WT, which would
normally be pointed LiRe˒oWT (“to see”). But this would imply the possibility of man’s
beholding the face of God, and so for this reason (presumably) the Masoretes pointed the word
LēRā˒oWT (“to be seen, or to appear”), thus permitting the interpretation, “to appear before Me.”
This should normally have been spelled LHR˒WT, if Isaiah really had intended to say “to
appear.” We do well, therefore, to explain the Masoretic pointing here as an
antianthropomorphism and to prefer the kethib as the original reading.

Summary of Textual Methods

In addition to the general rules given above, it would be well to summarize an excellent
methodology proposed by Wurthwein.
1. Where the MT and the other witnesses offer the same text and it is an intelligible and sensible
reading, it is inadmissible to reject this reading and resort to conjecture (as too many critics have
done).
2. Where there is a genuine deviation from the MT on the part of the other witnesses (and the
deviation is not simply a matter of translator’s interpretation) and both readings seem equally
sensible, then the preference should normally be given to the MT (unless one of the canons
intervenes to give clear preference to the other reading).
3. Where the text of the MT is doubtful or impossible because of factors of language or sense-in-
context, and where at the same time other witnesses offer a satisfactory reading, then the latter
should be given favorable consideration. Especially is this so if it can be seen how the MT
reading might have been corrupted through some familiar scribal error. But if there is reason to
believe that the ancient translator produced a clear reading only because he could not make out
what the Hebrew text meant and guessed at its meaning and supplied what would be plausible in
the context, then we have an obscurity which textual criticism cannot relieve except by
conjecture. We must simply label it as obscure or corrupt.
4. Where neither the MT nor the other witnesses offer a possible or probable text, conjecture may
legitimately be resorted to. But such a conjecture should try to restore a reading as close as
possible to the corrupted one itself, with due consideration for the well-known causes of textual
corruption (note “Types of Manuscript Error” above).
5. In all textual-critical work, due regard must be given to the psychology of the scribe himself.
We must always ask ourselves the question, How might this error—if error there be—have
originated from his hand? Does this accord with his type or habit of mind as observed elsewhere
in his work?
By means of this careful formula, Wurthwein attempts to set up a method of objectivity and
scientific procedure that will eliminate much of the reckless and ill-considered emendation which
has too often passed for bona fide textual criticism.

The Work of the Sopherim, the Talmud, and the Masoretes

The Sopherim represented that order of “scribes” (for so the term signifies) which first had its
rise under Ezra, the greatest scribe of them all. They formed a recognized guild of Bible-text
custodians in Jesus’ day. Their activity extended from 400 B.C. to A.D. 200, and their great
achievement was to standardize a pure text of the Hebrew Scriptures (as pure as their manuscript
sources permitted them). Presumably they had much to do with the hypothetical revision
committee and saw to it that all the copies of Scripture produced by their hands (and they were
the official Bible publication society of that day) would conform to the standard text. At some
unknown period (perhaps in the first century B.C.) they hit upon the device of counting all the
verses, words, and letters of each book in the Old Testament, and appending these figures at the
end of the book concerned. This would enable any checker to tell whether he had a perfect copy
before him, for he had only to count the verses, words and letters, and if they did not number to
the right total, he would know there was an error. These statistics of the Sopherim have been
included in the Masora Finalis of each book in the Masoretic Bible. It should be clearly
understood that the Sopherim worked only with the consonantal text; they had nothing to do with
the vowel points. Vowel points were not even invented until after A.D. 500.

Early Jewish Writings

Title Type Date Purpose

Sopherim Texual 400 B.C.–A.D. 200 Standardization of
pure text

Midrash Textual interpretation 100 B.C.–A.D. 300 Doctrinal and

and commentary homiletical
exposition

Tosefta Addition or A.D. 100–500 Teachings and

supplement traditions of the
Tannaim

Talmud Textual instructions A.D. 100–500 Contains the Mishnah

and the Germarah

Mishnah Repetitions, teaching A.D. 200 Oral laws and

traditions

Gemara Commentary A.D. 200–500 Supplement or

expanded
commentary on the
Mishnah

Masoretes Commentary A.D. 500–950 Inserted vowel

 points—moderate
texual criticism

One other contribution of the Sopherim consisted in the so-called tiqqūnêsōpherɩ̂ m, or “decrees
of the scribes,” eighteen in number. Many of these were of an antianthropomorphic character (cf.
Canon #7 above). For instance, in Gen. 18:22, “Jehovah stood yet” is altered to “Abraham stood
yet.” Or else they protect the dignity of God in an altered reading. Thus in the traditional text of
1 Sam. 3:13, the sons of Eli curse “God” (˓LHYM), but this is changed to: “they curse” (or “bring
a curse”) “upon themselves” (LHM—the aleph and yodh being omitted). Still others of these
emendations seem to have little point or justification.
According to Jewish tradition, the term Sopherim is to be applied more exactly to the earliest
group of scribes from the fifth century to third century B.C. (from Ezra to Antigonus of Socho).
After them came the Zugoth (the pairs of textual scholars) from the second to first centuries B.C.
(from Jose ben Joezer to Hillel). The third group were the Tannaim (“repeaters, or teachers”),
from the death of Hillel to the death of Judah Hannasi after A.D. 200. The teachings of all three
groups are found in the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Baraithoth, and the Midrash. More than two
hundred Tannaim are mentioned in these works, most of them being entitled either Rabbi or
Rabban (“teacher”).
The Jews preserved, at first by oral tradition and then in writing, an enormous amount of
traditional interpretation of the Torah and other parts of the Old Testament, together with
folklore embellishments, anecdotes, and homilies of various sorts. Much of this had to do with
practical legal questions, or with intricate details of ritual, or the like. This mass of tradition has
been preserved in two major collections, the Midrash and the Talmud, plus a minor one known
as the Tosefta. They are now described in chronological order.
The Midrash (textual study, or text interpretation, from daras, to “search, investigate”) was
brought together between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300. It was a doctrinal and homiletical exposition of
the Old Testament. Composed in both Hebrew sections and Aramaic sections, it provided a
commentary on the written law (i.e., the Pentateuch). It consisted of two parts: the Halakah
(“procedure”), commenting on the Torah only; and the Haggada (“declaration,” or
“explanation”), commenting on the entire Old Testament, and including various proverbs,
parables, and tales. These contain the earliest extant synagogue homilies. They have some
importance for textual criticism in their numerous quotations of the Old Testament text,
occasionally in a slightly different form from the MT.
The Tosēfta (“addition, or supplement”) arose between A.D. 100 and 300. It consists of a
collection of teachings and traditions of the Tannaim which were closely related to the Mishnah.
According to tradition, it contains that part of the original Mishnah which Rabbi Aqiba (ca. A.D.
100) omitted from his edition of the Mishnah, which was abbreviated in order to facilitate
memorization.
The Talmûd (“instruction,” from limmēd, “to teach”) grew up between A.D. 100 and 500. It
consists of two main divisions. The Mishnah (“repetition,” or “teaching”) was completed around
A.D. 200. Composed in Hebrew, it contained a digest of all the oral laws (supposedly
communicated by word of mouth from Moses to his seventy elders), traditions, and explanations
of Scripture. It is divided into six orders (sedārɩ̂ m): agriculture, feasts, women, civil and criminal
law, sacrifices or holy things, and unclean things. These in turn are subdivided into sixty-three
tractates (for the titles of which, see ISBE, p. 2905). The sages who contributed to the Mishnah
were known as Tannaim (the latest order of Sopherim, as mentioned above). The second main
division is the Gemara (“the matter that is learned,” from gemar, “to complete, accomplish, or
learn”). An Aramaic word, it indicates that it was composed in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. It
consists of a supplement to be attached to each of the tractates by way of expanded commentary
upon the Mishnah. It arose in two distinct forms, the Palestinian Gemara (ca. A.D. 200), and the
much larger Babylonian Gemara (ca. A.D. 500). The sages who contributed to the Gemara were
known as Amoraim (“speakers, explainers,” from ˒āmar, “to speak”).
The Masoretes were the scholars who between A.D. 500 and 950 gave the final form to the text
of the Old Testament. They were so called because they preserved in writing the oral tradition
(masorah) concerning the correct vowels and accents, and the number of occurrences of rare
words of unusual spellings. They received the unpainted, consonantal text of the Sopherim and
inserted the vowel points which gave to each word its exact pronunciation and grammatical
form. They even engaged in a moderate amount of textual criticism. Wherever they suspected the
word indicated by the consonantal text was erroneous, they corrected it in a very ingenious way.
They left the actual consonants undisturbed, as they had received them from the Sopherim. But
they inserted the vowel points which belonged to the new word which they were substituting for
the old, and then they inserted the consonants of the new word itself in very small letters in the
margin. For example, in Isa. 28:15 occurs the word cluster KY-˓BR. As normally pointed, this
would read KiY-˓āBaR (“when it has passed over”), and this is therefore the reading of the kethɩ̂ b
(which is an Aramaic term meaning “the thing written”, i.e., the word indicated by the
consonants). But the Masoretes felt that an imperfect tense should follow KiY (“when”) in this
connection, and therefore inserted under ˓BR the vowels appropriate to Ya˓aBōR (“it passes
over”); and then in the margin they wrote in small letters Y˓BR, which indicates this qerê (an
Aramaic term meaning “read!”) variant. (The customary abbreviation for kethɩ̂ b is K, and that for
qerê is Q.)
Perhaps the most famous (and frequent) example of a qerê reading is the covenant name of God,
Jehovah. This name is written with the four consonants YHWH, going back to an original
pronunciation, Yahweh. The proper, original rendering of Jehovah, therefore, is Yahweh (or
Jahweh, as the Germans write it). But the Jews as early as Nehemiah’s time began to feel qualms
about pronouncing the holy name, lest they bring upon themselves possible penal consequences
under the third commandment. It therefore became accepted practice to substitute the title “Lord”
(aDōNāY) for the name Yahweh whenever reading it aloud. To indicate this substitution, the
Masoretes inserted the vowels of aDōNāY under the consonants of JaHWeH, resulting in the
appearance of JeHōWāH or “Jehovah.” Misunderstanding this qerê, European scholars of the
Renaissance period (when Hebrew became avidly studied in Europe) supposed that the proper
pronunciation of the name was “Jehovah”—and so it has come down to us today. It was actually
Yahweh (this may be called the kethɩ̂ b reading), but the mistake has become so sanctioned by
usage that devout Christians generally are loath to accept any reversion to the pronunciation
which was historically correct.
In addition to the insertion of vowel points and the indication of qerē readings, the Masoretes
also busied themselves with accent marks. At first the accent marks were simpler and more
sparingly used, but later they became more complicated, especially as the accentual system
became perfected by the Tiberian School of Masoretes (Tiberias being the city mentioned in the
Gospels as situated by the Sea of Galilee). The most celebrated of all the Masoretes were Moses
ben Asher (with his learned son Aaron) and ben Naphtali. The standard text of the Hebrew Bible
is based on a ben Asher text (the Leningrad Codex of the Old Testament).
At the side margins of the Masoretic MSS was placed the Marginal Masorah. This included not
only the consonants of qerē readings (as described above), but also statistics as to how often
various words and phrases appearing in that line of script occurred elsewhere in the Hebrew
Scriptures. Or else they indicated how often they occurred elsewhere with that particular spelling
or combination of words. The most frequent notation of this sort was a single L (lamed) with a
dot over it, standing for Lō (“not”) and indicating that this word or this spelling does not occur
elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. (This of course served notice on future copyists that any
other occurrence of this unique word or spelling would be rejected as an error.)
At the bottom margin of the Masoretic MSS was the Larger Masorah, containing more
information of this sort, often furnishing mnemonic devices whereby all the occurrences of
infrequent words or phrases could be remembered. For example, at Gen. 1:1 the Masoretic note
says with reference to the first word cluster (In-the-beginning—berē˒šɩ̂ t): “The sign is: God
establishes the righteous” (elōhɩ̂ m yā ḵɩ̂ m haṣṣedek). This indicates that in the first occurrence
(Gen. 1:1) the next word after berē˒šɩ̂ t is God; the second occurrence of berē˒šɩ̂ t (Jer. 26:1) has
the name of King Jehoiakim after it (for Jehoiakim, or Yehō-yākɩ̂ m, means “Yahweh
establishes”); the third occurrence of berē˒šɩ̂ t (Jer. 28:1) is followed by the name of Zedekiah (for
Zedekiah, or Ṣedeḳ-Yah, means “Righteous is Yahweh”). Needless to say, this type of
information is of marginal interest to most modern scholarship, and thus the Masoretic notations
are not widely studied in non-Jewish circles.
The Final Masorah contains mostly statistics as to the number of verses, letters, and the like,
occurring in the book, and indicates the middle word and the middle letter.
Two other features of the Masoretic recension deserve mention, because of their bearing upon
textual criticism. There are fifteen dotted words (“neqûdôt”) in the Old Testament text, and
Jewish tradition has it that these were words which in the judgment of the scholars of the so-
called Great Synagogue (apparently founded by Ezra) should be deleted, or at least marked as
doubtful. For example, in Num. 3:39 the word “and Aaron” is dotted, inasmuch as Aaron himself
was not one of those numbered in the census. The other device is that of suspended letters, that
is, letters placed above the line. These occurred in four passages, where the Masoretes (following
the decision of the Sopherim) suspected the genuineness of the letters so placed. Thus in Judg.
18:30 the original wording apparently was, “Jonathan the son of Gershom the son of Moses”
(MōŠeH, Hebrew); but to safeguard Moses’ reputation, an extra N (nun) was inserted (although
slightly above the line) so as to change the name from “Moses” to “Manasseh” (MeNaŠeH).
In conclusion we should accord to the Masoretes the highest praise for their meticulous care in
preserving so sedulously the consonantal text of the Sopherim which had been entrusted to them.
They together with the Sopherim themselves gave the most diligent attention to accurate
preservation of the Hebrew Scriptures that has ever been devoted to any ancient literature,
secular or religious, in the history of human civilization. So conscientious were they in their
stewardship of the holy text that they did not even venture to make the most obvious corrections,
so far as the consonants were concerned, but left their Vorlage (i.e., the older text from which the
copy was made) exactly as it was handed down to them. Because of their faithfulness, we have
today a form of the Hebrew text which in all essentials duplicates the recension which was
considered authoritative in the days of Christ and the apostles, if not a century earlier. And this in
turn, judging from Qumran evidence, goes back to an authoritative revision of the Old Testament
text which was drawn up on the basis of the most reliable manuscripts available for collation
from previous centuries. These bring us very close in all essentials to the original autographs
themselves, and furnish us with an authentic record of God’s revelation. As W. E Albright has
said, “We may rest assured that the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, though not infallible,
has been preserved with an accuracy perhaps unparalleled in any other Near Eastern literature.”

5
The Canon of the Old Testament

The Canon of the Old Testament

THE TERM canon is derived from a Greek word kanōn, which means “straight rod, or straight
edge, or ruler.” As applied to literature, canon has come to mean those writings which conform
to the rule or standard of divine inspiration and authority. In the Hebrew Scriptures there are
thirty-nine books which were considered by the Jewish community to be canonical. These are the
same as those accepted by the apostolic church and by the Protestant churches since the days of
the Reformation. The Roman church adds to these fourteen other books (or portions of books)
which compose the Apocrypha, and consider these of equal authority with the rest. This raises
the question, What makes a book of Scripture canonical? When were these various books
composing the Old Testament considered or accepted as canonical by God’s ancient people? We
shall defer a consideration of the claims of the apocryphal books until a later part of this chapter.
First let us consider the tripartite division of the Hebrew canon (Law, Prophets, Writings), and
the explanations which have been offered for it.
The Masoretic edition of the Old Testament differs in certain particulars from the order of books
followed in the Septuagint, and also from that of Protestant churches. The compilers of the Greek
Version (LXX) observed a more or less topical arrangement, as follows.
The 5 books of law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The 15 books of history: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings (generally these
last four are named, 1, 2, 3, and 4 Kingdoms), 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Esdras (the first being
apocryphal, the second being canonical Ezra), Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, and Esther.
The 7 books of poetry and wisdom: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon,
Wisdom of Solomon, and Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus).
The 19 books of prophecy: the 12 Minor Prophets—Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah,
Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi; the 7 Major Prophets—Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel (including Susanna,
Bel and the Dragon, and the Song of the Three Holy Children).

The Supplemental Books of History: 1 and 2 Maccabees

In general the Latin Vulgate follows the same order as the Septuagint, except that 1 and 2 Esdras
is Apocryphal equal of our Ezra and Nehemiah, whereas the Apocryphal parts (3 and 4 Esdras)
are placed after the New Testament books, as is also the Prayer of Manasseh. Also, in the
Vulgate the Major Prophets are placed before the Minor Prophets. From this listing it will be
apparent that the Protestant Bible follows the same topical order of arrangement as the Vulgate,
except that all the Apocryphal parts (including the considerable additions to Esther) are omitted.
In order, then, the Protestant Bible follows the Vulgate, but in content it follows the MT.
It should also be noted that in the Syriac Peshitta the original order of the books was: Pentateuch,
Job, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Canticles,
Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Isaiah, Twelve Minor Prophets, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and
Daniel.
The order of books in the Masoretic Text is as follows: the Torah (or Pentateuch); the prophets
(Nebi˒ɩ̂ m) in the following order: Former Prophets—Joshua, Judges, (1 and 2) Samuel, and (1 and
2) Kings; Latter Prophets—Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor
Prophets (in the same order as in the English Bible); the Writings (Kethûbɩ̂ m, Greek,
Hagiographa, “Holy Writings”): Poetry and Wisdom—Psalms, Proverbs, and Job (but
Leningrad Codex has Psalms, Job, and Proverbs); the Rolls or Megilloth—Song of Solomon,
Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (but Leningrad: Ruth, Song, Ecclesiastes,
Lamentations, Esther); Historical—Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
It ought to be mentioned, however, that the order of the books composing the MT represents a
later division (largely resorted to in order to facilitate discussion with Christian apologists who
appealed to the Old Testament in their polemic against Judaism). The earlier division consisted
of the same content as the thirty-nine books listed above, but arranged in only twenty-four books.
This meant that 1 and 2 Samuel were counted as one book; likewise 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2
Chronicles. The twelve Minor Prophets were also counted as one book, (since they could all be
contained quite easily in a single scroll) and Ezra and Nehemiah formed a single unit. Josephus,
however, who wrote near the end of the first century A.D., gives evidence of a twenty-two book
canon. This apparently involved the inclusion of Ruth with Judges and of Lamentations with
Jeremiah. Yet essentially, whether thirty-nine books, or twenty-four, or twenty-two, the basic
divisions of the Hebrew canon have remained the same. The reason Ruth and Lamentations were
later separated from Judges and Jeremiah, respectively, is that they were used in the Jewish
liturgical year, along with the three other units in the Megilloth. That is to say, Canticles (Song
of Solomon) was read at Passover (in the first month); Ruth was read at Pentecost (in the third
month); Lamentations was read on the ninth of Ab (fifth month); Ecclesiastes was read at the
Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month; and Esther was read at the Feast of Purim in the
twelfth month. This accounts for the MT order in the Megilloth: Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations,
Ecclesiastes, and Esther.
From what has just been said about the inclusion of Ruth in Judges and Lamentations in
Jeremiah, it is apparent that the list of Kethûbɩ̂ m was by no means fixed and rigid. If under the
twenty-two book division of Josephus these two units (Ruth and Lamentations) of the Kethûbɩ̂ m
were earlier included under the prophets, then the third category of the Hebrew canon must have
been smaller in the first century A.D. than the later MT division would indicate. Josephus refers
to the third category as having only four books, which he describes as containing “hymns to God
and precepts for the conduct of human life.” This would seem to exclude Daniel from the third
division and imply its inclusion among the prophets, since Daniel is neither hymnic nor
preceptive. The same would be true of the historical books such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles. The still earlier description of the third division by the prologue of Ecclesiasticus as
“others who have followed in the steps of the Prophets” and “other books of our fathers” is too
vague to serve as a basis for any deductions. But it is rather striking that the New Testament
never specifies any other book besides the Psalms as comprising the third division of the Old
Testament (Luke 24:44 speaks of the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms). Usually
the Hebrew Scriptures are referred to simply as “the Law and the Prophets”; in one place even a
passage from Psalms (Ps. 82) is spoken of as being written “in your law” (John 10:34). The
Qumran Manual of Discipline and the Zadokite Document refer to the Scriptures simply as
“Moses and the Prophets.” No deductions as to the books in the Kethûbɩ̂ m may safely be drawn
from, since the later book-order is obviously not pre-Christian in its origin.

The Antilegomena

At this point a word must be said about the so-called Antilegomena (“the books spoken
against”). The Mishnah mentions the existence of controversy in some Jewish circles during the
second century A.D. relative to the canonicity of Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. Doubts were
expressed by some during the same period as to the book of Proverbs. Ezekiel had also,
according to the Gemara, been under discussion as to its authority until the objections to it were
settled in A.D. 66. We are told that the disciples of Shammai in the first century B.C. contested the
canonicity of Ecclesiastes, whereas the school of Hillel just as vigorously upheld it. The
scholarly discussions held at Jamnia in A.D. 90 sustained the claims of both Ecclesiastes and
Canticles to divine authority. These minority objections should not be misconstrued as having
delayed the canonicity of the five books concerned, any more than Martin Luther’s sixteenth-
century objections to James and Esther delayed canonical recognition of these books.
To deal with the charges against these disputed books, we must take them up one by one. The
criticism of Ecclesiastes was based upon its alleged pessimism, its supposed Epicureanism, and
denial of the life to come. But thoughtful students of the book came to the conclusion that none
of these charges was justified when the work was interpreted in the light of the author’s special
technique and purposes.
The criticism of the Song of Solomon was based on the passages in it which speak of physical
attractiveness in bold and enthusiastic imagery bordering on the erotic (if taken in a crassly
literal way). But the allegorical interpretation of Hillel, who identified Solomon with Jehovah
and the Shulamite with Israel, revealed spiritual dimensions in this truly beautiful production.
Christian exegetes followed this lead in applying the figure of Solomon to Christ and the bride to
the Church, and attained thereby richer insight into the love relationship between the Savior and
His redeemed.
As for Esther, the objection was that the name of God does not appear in it. But this drawback
(difficult though it is to explain) was more than offset by the remarkable manifestations of divine
providence working through every dramatic circumstance in order to deliver the Jewish race
from the greatest threat to its existence ever faced in their history.
In the case of Ezekiel, the problem it presented consisted in the disagreements of detail between
the latter-day temple and ritual of the last ten chapters and those of the Mosaic tabernacle and
Solomonic temple. But it was pointed out in rebuttal that these differences were found only in
minor details and might pertain to a still future temple, rather than to the second temple erected
by Zerubbabel. In any event, it was to be confidently expected that Elijah upon his return to earth
would clear up all these difficulties for the faithful.
The objections to Proverbs were not so serious, but centered rather in a few apparently
contradictory precepts, such as 26:4–5: “Answer not a fool according to his folly.… Answer a
fool according to his folly.”

Ancient Witnesses to the Masoretic Canon

How early was this twenty-two book canon of the Palestinian Jews? The earliest extant reference
to the three main divisions of the Hebrew Scripture is to be found in the prologue to the
apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, composed ca. 190 B.C. in Hebrew by Jesus ben Sirach. The
prologue itself was composed in Greek by the grandson of this author, who translated the entire
work into Greek. In the prologue (dating from about 130 B.C.) we read, “Whereas many and
great things have been delivered to us by the Law and the Prophets and by others that have
followed their steps—my grandfather, Jesus, when he had much given himself to the reading of
the Law and the Prophets and other books of our fathers, and had gotten therein good judgment,
was drawn on also himself to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom.” What is
classified in the MT canon as the Kethûbɩ̂ m (“the Writings or Hagiographa”) is referred to here
as (a) books by others who have followed in the steps of the prophets, (b) other books of our
fathers. This shows that a tripartite division of some sort already existed in the second century
B.C. Note also that 1 Maccabees, composed about the same time as the prologue, refers to two
episodes in Daniel (1 Macc. 2:59–60, i.e., the deliverance of Daniel himself from the lions’ den)
and quotes expressly from the Psalms (e.g., 1 Macc. 7:17 quotes from Ps. 79:2–3); and both
these books (apparently regarded as canonical) belong to the Kethûbɩ̂ m. As for the New
Testament, Luke 24:44 refers to the Old Testament as “the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and
the Psalms.” Not only the Psalms, but also Proverbs and Daniel are often referred to as the
authoritative Word of God, and even Lamentations is alluded to in Matt. 5:35. Since these four
books belong to the later list of Kethûbɩ̂ m, there is no reasonable doubt that the third division of
the Hebrew canon was put on a level with the first two as divinely inspired.
Next we come to Josephus of Jerusalem (A.D. 37–95), whose numeration of the Old Testament as
consisting of twenty-two books has already been alluded to. In his Contra Apionem, he says,
“We have not tens of thousands of books, discordant and conflicting, but only twenty-two
containing the record of all time, which have been justly believed to be divine.” After referring to
the five books of Moses, thirteen books of the prophets, and the remaining books (which
“embrace hymns to God and counsels for men for the conduct of life”), he makes this significant
statement: “From Artaxerxes (the successor of Xerxes) until our time everything has been
recorded, but has not been deemed worthy of like credit with what preceded, because the exact
succession of the prophets ceased. But what faith we have placed in our own writings is evident
by our conduct; for though so long a time has now passed, no one has dared to add anything to
them, or to take anything from them, or to alter anything in them” (1.8).
Note three important features of this statement: (1) Josephus includes the same three divisions of
the Hebrew Scriptures as does the MT (although restricting the third group to “hymns” and
hokmȃ), and he limits the number of canonical books in these three divisions to twenty-two. (2)
No more canonical writings have been composed since the reign of Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes
(464–424 B.C.), that is, since the time of Malachi. (3) No additional material was ever included in
the canonical twenty-two books during the centuries between (i.e., from 425 B.C. to A.D. 90).
Rationalist higher critics emphatically deny the last two points, but they have to deal with the
witness of such an early author as Josephus and explain how the knowledge of the allegedly
post-Malachi date of sizable portions, such as Daniel, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and many
of the psalms, had been kept from this learned Jew in the first century A.D. It is true that Josephus
also alludes to apocryphal material (as from 1 Esdras and 1 Maccabees); but in view of the
statement quoted above, it is plain that he was using it merely as a historical source, not as
divinely inspired books.
The oldest catalogue of the books of the Old Testament canon now in existence is the list of
Bishop Melito of Sardis, written ca. A.D. 170. He states that he went to the Orient to investigate
the number and order of the books of the Old Testament and came to the following result: “Five
of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four
of Kingdoms, two of Chronicles, Psalms of David, Proverbs of Solomon (which is also
Wisdom), Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Job; the Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Twelve in one
book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Ezra.” In this list note: (1) Lamentations is omitted, but was probably
subsumed under Jeremiah; (2) Nehemiah likewise, but probably included with Ezra; (3) Esther is
omitted altogether for some unknown reason; (4) with the possible exception of the term Wisdom
(which conceivably could refer to the Wisdom of Solomon) no book of the Apocrypha is
included.
In the third century A.D., Origen (who died in 254) left a catalogue of twenty-two books of the
Old Testament which was preserved in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (6:25). This indicates
the same list as that of the twenty-two book canon of Josephus (and of the MT). The only
difference is that he apparently includes the Epistle of Jeremiah, being perhaps ignorant of the
fact that it was never written in Hebrew.
Approximately contemporaneous with Origen was Tertullian (A.D. 160–250), the earliest of the
Latin Fathers whose books are still extant. He states the number of canonical books as twenty-
four. Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 305–366) numbers them as twenty-two. Jerome (A.D. 340–420) both
in the Prologus Galeatus and elsewhere advocated recognition of only the twenty-two books
contained in the Hebrew, and the relegation of the apocryphal books to a secondary position.
Thus, in his Commentary on Daniel he cast doubt upon the canonicity of Susanna on the ground
that a certain word play put into Daniel’s mouth was derivable only from Greek and not from
Hebrew (implication: the story must have been originally composed in Greek). Similarly also in
connection with Bel and the Dragon he remarks: “This objection is easily solved by asserting
that this particular story is not contained in the Hebrew of the book of Daniel. If, however,
anyone should be able to prove that it belongs in the canon, then we should be obliged to seek
out some other answer to this objection.”

The Question of the Canonicity of the Apocrypha

Not only the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox communions contend for the canonicity of the
fourteen apocryphal books (in whole or in part), but also Protestant scholars of liberal persuasion
speak of an “Alexandrian Canon” as having equal claims to validity with those of the so-called
Palestinian Canon (of twenty-two or thirty-nine books). The evidences appealed to for this
contention deserve careful scrutiny.
The first argument adduced in favor of the Apocrypha is that the early versions contained them.
This, however, is only partially true. Certainly the Aramaic Targums did not recognize them. Not
even the Syriac Peshitta in its earliest form contained a single apocryphal book; it was only later
that some of them were added. We have just seen that Jerome, the great translator of the
Scriptures into Latin, did not recognize the Apocrypha as being of equal authority with the books
of the Hebrew canon. A more careful investigation of this claim narrows down the authority of
the Apocrypha as resting upon only one ancient version, the Septuagint, and those later
translations (such as the Itala, the Coptic and Ethiopic, and later Syriac) which were derived
from it. Even in the case of the Septuagint, the apocryphal books maintain a rather uncertain
existence. The Codex Vaticanus (B) lacks 1 and 2 Maccabees (canonical, according to Rome),
but includes 1 Esdras (noncanonical, according to Rome). The Sinaiticus (Aleph) omits Baruch
(canonical, according to Rome), but includes 4 Maccabees (noncanonical according to Rome).
The Alexandrinus (A) contains three “noncanonical” Apocrypha: 1 Esdras and 3 and 4
Maccabees. Thus it turns out that even the three earliest MSS or the LXX show considerable
uncertainty as to which books constitute the list of Apocrypha, and that the fourteen accepted by
the Roman church are by no means substantiated by the testimony of the great uncials of the
fourth and fifth centuries.
It is urged by protagonists of the Apocrypha that the presence of apocryphal books in the LXX
indicates the existence of a so-called Alexandrian Canon, which included these fourteen extra
books. But it is by no means certain that all the books in the LXX were considered canonical
even by the Alexandrian Jews themselves. Quite decisive against this is the evidence of the
writings of Philo of Alexandria (who lived in the first century A.D.). Although he quotes
frequently from the canonical books of the “Palestinian Canon,” he never once quotes from any
of the apocryphal books. This is impossible to reconcile with the theory of a larger Alexandrian
Canon, unless perchance some Alexandrian Jews did not accept this Alexandrian Canon, while
others did.
Secondly, it is reliably reported that Aquila’s Greek Version was accepted by the Alexandrian
Jews in the second century A.D., even though it did not contain the Apocrypha. A reasonable
deduction from these evidences would be that (as Jerome himself put it) the Alexandrian Jews
chose to include in their edition of the Old Testament both the books they recognized as
canonical and also the books which were “ecclesiastical” (i.e., considered valuable and edifying
though not inerrant).
Additional support for this supposition (that subcanonical works may be preserved and utilized
along with canonical) has recently been found in the discoveries of Qumran Cave 4. There in the
heartland of Palestine, where surely the Palestinian Canon should have been authoritative, at
least two apocryphal books are represented—Ecclesiasticus and Tobit. One fragment of Tobit
appears on a scrap of papyrus, another on leather; there is also a leather fragment in Hebrew.
Several fragments of Ecclesiasticus were also discovered there, and so far as they go, at least,
agree quite exactly with the eleventh-century MS of Ecclesiasticus found in the Cairo Geniza
back in the 1890s (cf. Burrows, MLDSS, pp. 177–78). For that matter, the Fourth Qumran Cave
has also yielded pseudepigraphical works like the Testament of Levi in Aramaic, the Testament
of Levi in Hebrew, and the book of Enoch (fragments from ten different MSS!). Surely no one
could seriously contend that the straightlaced Qumran sectarians considered all these apocryphal
and pseudepigraphical works canonical simply because they possessed copies of them.
Appeal is often made to the fact that the New Testament usually employs the LXX translation in
its quotations from the Old Testament. Therefore, since the LXX did contain the Apocrypha, the
New Testament apostles must have recognized the authority of the entire LXX as it was then
constituted. Moreover it is a fact, it is urged, that appeal is occasionally made to works outside
the Palestinian Canon. Wildeboer and Torrey14 have collected all possible instances of such
quotations or allusions to apocryphal works, including several which are only suspected.
But all this line of argument is really irrelevant to the issue at hand, since none of these sources is
even alleged to be from the fourteen books of the Roman Apocrypha. In most cases these works
which are supposed to have been quoted from have long since disappeared—works such as
Apocalypse of Elias and (apart from a Latin fragment) Assumption of Moses. Only in one
instance, the quotation from Enoch 1:9 in Jude 14–16, has the source quoted from survived.
There are quotations from pagan Greek authors too in the New Testament. In Acts 17:28 Paul
quotes from Aratus’ Phaenomena, line 5; in 1 Cor. 15:33 he quotes from Menander’s comedy,
Thais. Surely no one would suppose that such quotations as these establish the canonicity of
either Aratus or Menander. On the contrary, the testimony of the New Testament is most
decisive against the canonicity of the fourteen books of the Apocrypha. Virtually all the thirty-
nine books of the Old Testament are quoted from as divinely authoritative, or are at least alluded
to. While it has just been pointed out that mere quotation does not necessarily establish
canonicity, nevertheless it is inconceivable that the New Testament authors could have
considered the fourteen books of the Roman Catholic Apocrypha canonical and never once
quoted from or alluded to any of them.
The second chief argument in favor of the Apocrypha is that the church Fathers quote from these
books as authoritative. It would be more correct to say that some of the early Christian writers
appear to do so, while others take a clear-cut stand against their canonicity. Among those in
favor are the writers of 1 Clement and Epistle of Bamabas, and most notably Jerome’s younger
contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Yet we must qualify this advocacy as only apparent, or at
least presumptive, for we have already seen that Jude could quote Enoch as containing a true
account of one ancient episode without necessarily endorsing the whole book of Enoch as
canonical. As for Augustine, his attitude was rather uncritical and inconsistent. On the one hand,
he threw his influence at the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) in favor of including the entire
fourteen as canonical; on the other hand, when an appeal was made by an antagonist to a passage
in 2 Maccabees to settle an argument, Augustine replied that his cause must be weak if he had to
resort to a book not in the same category as those received and accepted by the Jews.
The ambiguous advocacy of the Apocrypha on the part of Augustine is more than offset by the
contrary position of the revered Athanasius (who died in A.D. 365), so highly regarded by both
East and West as the champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy. In his Thirty-ninth Letter he discussed
the “particular books and their number, which are accepted by the church.” In paragraph 4 he
says, “There are, then, of the Old Testament twenty-two books in number,” and he proceeds to
enumerate the same books as are found in the MT in approximately the same order as in the
Protestant Bible. In paragraphs 6 and 7 he states that the extrabiblical books (i.e., the fourteen of
the Apocrypha) are “not included in the canon,” but merely “appointed to be read.” Nevertheless
the Eastern Church later showed a tendency to concur with the Western in the acceptance of the
Apocrypha (second Trullan Council at Constantinople in A.D. 692). Even so, there were many
who had misgivings about some of the fourteen, and at last in Jerusalem in 1672 the Greek
Church narrowed down the number of canonical Apocrypha to four: Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus,
Tobit, and Judith.

Tests of Canonicity

First we may consider certain inadequate tests which have been proposed in recent times.
1. J. G. Eichhorn (1780) considered age to be the test for canonicity. All books believed to have
been composed after Malachi’s time were excluded from consideration. But this theory does not
account for the numerous older works like the Book of Jashar (Josh. 10:13; 2 Sam. 1:18) and the
Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Num. 21:14) which were not accounted authoritative.
2. E Hitzig (ca. 1850) made the Hebrew language the Jewish test of canonicity. But this does not
explain why Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, and 1 Maccabees were rejected even though they were
composed in Hebrew. It also raises questions as to the acceptability of the Aramaic chapters of
Daniel and Ezra.
3. G. Wildeboer makes conformity to the Torah the test of canonicity for the later books. But
later on in his discussion he introduces many other criteria which render this worthless: (a)
canoncial books had to be written in Hebrew or Aramaic; and they either had to (b) treat ancient
history (like Ruth or Chronicles), or (c) speak of the establishment of a new order of things
(Ezra, Nehemiah), or (d) be assigned to a famous person of ancient times, such as Solomon,
Samuel, Daniel, or (perhaps) Job, or (e) be in complete harmony with the national sentiment of
people and scribes (Esther). Here indeed we have a bewildering profusion of tests. As for
Wildeboer’s original criterion, how can we be sure that the Words of Nathan the prophet
(referred to in 2 Chron. 9:29) or Isaiah’s Acts of Uzziah (2 Chron. 26:22) or Jeremiah’s
Lamentation for Josiah (2 Chron. 35:25) were not in conformity to the Torah, at least as much so
as their other words or writings which have been preserved in the canon? As for (e), many of the
pseudepigraphical works, like Enoch, Lamech and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the
Testament of Adam, and several others, were assigned to famous men of old, and it is not
absolutely certain that none of them was originally composed in Aramaic (if not in Hebrew).
The only true test of canonicity which remains is the testimony of God the Holy Spirit to the
authority of His own Word. This testimony found a response of recognition, faith, and
submission in the hearts of God’s people who walked in covenant fellowship with Him. As E. J.
Young puts it, “To these and other proposed criteria we must reply with a negative. The
canonical books of the Old Testament were divinely revealed and their authors were holy men
who spoke as they were borne of the Holy Ghost. In His good providence God brought it about
that His people should recognize and receive His Word. How He planted this conviction in their
hearts with respect to the identity of His Word we may not be able fully to understand or explain.
We may, however, follow our Lord, who placed the imprimatur of His infallible authority upon
the books of the Old Testament.”

TEST OF CANONICITY

The only true test of canonicity is the testimony

of God the Holy Spirit to the authority of His
own Word.

We may go further than this and point out that in the nature of the case we could hardly expect
any other valid criteria than this. If canonicity is a quality somehow imparted to the books of
Scripture by any kind of human decision, as Liberal scholars unquestioningly assume (and as
even the Roman Church implies by her self-contradictory affirmation: “The Church is the mother
of the Scripture”), then perhaps a set of mechanical tests could be set up to determine which
writings to accept as authoritative and which to reject. But if, on the other hand, a sovereign God
has taken the initiative in revelation and in the production of an inspired record of that revelation
through human agents, it must simply be a matter of recognition of the quality already inherent
by divine act in the books so inspired. When a child recognizes his own parent from a multitude
of other adults at some public gathering, he does not impart any new quality of parenthood by
such an act; he simply recognizes a relationship which already exists. So also with lists of
authoritative books drawn up by ecclesiastical synods or councils. They did not impart
canonicity to a single page of Scripture; they simply acknowledged the divine inspiration of
religious documents which were inherently canonical from the time they were first composed,
and formally rejected other books for which canonicity had been falsely claimed.

Liberal Theories as to the Origin of the Canon

The foregoing survey has furnished a proper basis on which to evaluate the standard higher
critical account of the evolution of the Hebrew canon. Those who do not take seriously the
Bible’s own claim to be the uniquely inspired revelation of God’s will must necessarily cast
about for some more rationalistic, down-to-earth explanation of the origin of these books.
Because of antisupematuralistic presuppositions, they must be true to their own philosophical
principles in rejecting all biblical data which testify to direct revelation from God. For example,
the Pentateuch affirms with great frequency, “Jehovah said unto Moses, ‘Speak unto the children
of Israel and say unto them—’ ” But scholars who do not believe that God could ever speak
personally and intelligibly to Moses (or any other man) must reject all such biblical statements as
legendary. The notice that Moses wrote out a copy of the Torah and laid it up before the ark of
the covenant (Deut. 31:9, 26) must be ruled out of court. The same is true of the numerous
references to a written law of Moses in Joshua (e.g., 1:8, and also 8:32, which affirms that Joshua
had the Torah inscribed on stone stelae for public convenience). Only those references to a
reading of the Torah which accord with rationalist presuppositions are to be taken as historical.
The Development Hypothesis (cf. chaps. 11 and 12) and the Documentary Theory of the
Pentateuch are explained in detail further on, but for the present a brief summary of the critical
theory of the canon must suffice.
Liberal scholarship explains the threefold division of the Hebrew canon (i.e., Torah, Prophets,
and Kethûbɩ̂ m) as resulting from three separate stages in the composition of the various books
themselves. That is to say, the Torah arose in successive accretions starting at 850 B.C. (the
earliest written document), combined with a later document between 750 and 650; then in 621, at
the time of Josiah’s reform, Deuteronomy became the first unit of the Pentateuch to achieve
canonicity, being formally accepted by both king and people (2 Kings 23). During the
Babylonian Exile (587–539 B.C.), the ritual and priestly sections were written up by Levitical
authors under the inspiration of Ezekiel, and their activity continued down to the time of Ezra
(who was one of their number). Nehemiah 8:1–8 contains a record of the first public reading of
the entire Torah as “the book of the Law of Moses” (some parts of which had been just newly
finished—according to the Documentarians—and all of which was at least five hundred years
later than the death of Moses). Ezra’s public was somehow convinced that these five books of
mixed and spurious parentage were indeed the product of Moses’ pen and contained the
authoritative Word of God. Thus they imparted canonization to the first division of the Old
Testament, the Torah, in 444 B.C.
So far as the second division, the Prophets, is concerned, these were gradually assembled into an
authoritative list between 300 and 200 B.C. It could not have been much earlier than that, because
(according to higher critical theory) certain parts of Isaiah, Joel, Zechariah and others were not
written until the third century B.C. (Some scholars, like Duhm, insisted that certain portions of
Isaiah were not composed until the second or first century B.C.) Hence the second division
achieved canonical status under unknown circumstances at a place unknown at a time unknown,
but approximately 200 B.C.
As for the third division, the Kethûbɩ̂ m or writings, they were not collected (and most of them
were not even written) until well after the collection of the prophets had begun. Since Daniel, on
grounds of literary criticism, was composed around 168 B.C., the Kethubim could not have been
assembled much before 150 B.C., since a couple of decades at least were necessary for a book to
achieve canonical stature. Preliminary or tentative canonization of this third group of books was
doubtless achieved between 150 and 100 B.C., but final ratification was deferred until the
hypothetical Council of Janmia in A.D. 90.
Such is the usual account of the formation of circles today. Granted their presuppositions and
critical methodology, it is perhaps reasonable enough. If, however, their datings of portions of
the Old Testament which they have assigned to post-fifth-century times can be shown to be ill
founded (as the succeeding chapters attempt to do), then this whole theory of the canon must be
abandoned in favor of that account which is presented by the Scripture itself. The biblical authors
indicate very clearly, whenever the matter comes up that the various books of the Bible were
canonical from the moment of their inception, by virtue of the divine authority (“Thus saith the
Lord”) behind them, and the books received immediate recognition and acceptance by the
faithful as soon as they were made aware of the writings.
As to the Torah, we are told in Deut. 31:9 that an authoritative copy of it was laid up before the
ark not long before Moses’ death in 1405 B.C. We are not told anywhere at what time the three
sections of the prophets (Former Prophets, Major Prophets, and Minor Prophets) were assembled
into a single main division. If Malachi was the latest book in this group, canonization of the
whole could hardly have taken place until about 400 B.C. The criterion for what books belonged
to the prophets may have been their authorship. They were all composed by the authoritative
interpreters of the law who belonged to the prophetic order (according to Deut. 18), and either
transmitted their messages directly from God, or else composed an account of Israel’s history
according to God’s perspective (Judges, Samuel, and Kings).
As for the third division, the Writings, it is obvious that all inspired books which did not belong
to either of the first two groups were put here. All they had in common was that they were not
composed by human authors who belonged to the prophetic order. Thus Daniel’s memoirs were
assigned to the Kethubim by the later rabbis because he was a civil servant and did not belong to
the prophetic order. It is true that he like David and Solomon possessed a prophetic gift, but none
of these were formerly anointed as prophets of Jehovah. The same nonprophetic status
characterized the unnamed authors of Job and Esther, as well as Governor Nehemiah and Ezra
the scribe. (We have already seen that Lamentations, which was the composition of Jeremiah,
originally was included among the prophets.) But there can be no question of time sequence, so
far as the second and third groups are concerned. Much of the material of the Kethubim was
written before the earliest of the writing prophets. The units of each division were formed more
or less contemporaneously, and they were assigned later to each group, the prophets and the
writings, on the basis of authorship. While we have no actual notice as to who composed Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, or Kings, the viewpoint of the authors—as even Liberal critics are swift to
agree—is consistently a prophetic one.

6
History of the Documentary Theory of the
Pentateuch
UNTIL THE RISE of deistic philosophy in the eighteenth century, the Christian church had
always taken at face value the claims of the Pentateuch to have been composed by the historic
Moses of the fifteenth century B.C. A few Jewish scholars such as the pantheistic Spanish Jew,
Benedict Spinoza (a name derived from espinoso: “spiny, thorny”), had suggested the possibility
of later authorship of a least parts of the Torah, but these conjectures had been largely ignored by
European scholarship, until the deistic movement created a more favorable attitude for historical
skepticism and the rejection of the supernatural. (Spinoza in 1670 had expressed the view in his
Tracatus Theologico-Politicus that the Pentateuch could hardly have been written by Moses,
since he is referred to in the third person, he rather than by the first, I; nor could he have recorded
his own death, as is done in Deut. 34. Spinoza therefore proposed Ezra as the final composer of
the Torah (Although this suggestion was largely ignored in his own generation, it constituted a
remarkable anticipation of the final formulation of the Documentary Hypothesis by Graf,
Kuenen, and Wellhausen in the latter half of the nineteenth century.)

Early Developments

The Documentary Hypothesis—the theory that the Pentateuch was a compilation of selections
from several different written documents composed at different places and times over a period of
five centuries, long after Moses—had its beginning with Jean Astruc, a French physician who
became interested in the literary analysis of Genesis. He was intrigued by the way in which God
was referred to only as Elohim (God) in Genesis 1 and mostly as Jehovah (or Yahweh) in Gen. 2.
In his Conjectures Concerning the Original Memoranda Which It Appears Moses Used to
Compose the Book of Genesis (1753), he tried to account for this phenomenon by the supposition
that Moses used two different written sources which gave two different accounts of creation. He
contended that in composing these two chapters, Moses quoted one author who knew of God
only by the name of Elohim (presumably the earlier writer) and another author who referred to
Him only as Jehovah. While Astruc’s proposal found little immediate favor, it set forth a
criterion of source division which before long met with a response from a scholarly world (which
was similarly involved in the dissection of Homer’s epics into many different sources) and
furnished the first basic assumption of the Documentary Hypothesis, the criterion of divine
names.
The next stage came with the Einleitung in das alte Testament (Introduction to the Old
Testament) of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, published in 1780–1783. He divided the entire book of
Genesis, plus the first two chapters of Exodus (up to Moses’ interview with God at the burning
bush) between the Jahwist and the Elohist (J and E). He attempted to correlate the supposedly
divergent “parallel accounts” and “doublets” (e.g., the “two accounts” of the Flood) with these
two “sources” and isolate the characteristic traits of each. He at first attributed to Moses the
editorial work of combining these “pre-Mosaic” written materials, but in later editions of his
Einleitung he at last yielded to the growingly popular view that the Pentateuch was written after
the time of Moses. Thus was the J-E division extended to much of the Pentateuch.
The third stage came with the contribution of Willem Martin Lebrecht De Wette concerning
Deuteronomy. In his Dissertation Critico-Exegetica (1805) and his Beitraege zur Einleitung
(1806), he set forth the view that none of the Pentateuch came from a period earlier than the time
of David. But as for Deuteronomy, it bore all the earmarks of being the book of the law which
was found by the high priest Hilkiah in the Jerusalem temple at the time of King Josiah’s reform,
according to 2 Kings 22. Both the king and the priest were united in the purpose to abolish all
worship and sacrifice to Jehovah outside the capital city. Centralization of worship would
contribute to closer political unification of all parts of the kingdom, and it would insure that all
revenues from the pious would pour into the coffers of the Jerusalem priesthood. Therefore this
book was concocted to serve the governmental campaign, and its discovery was then staged at
the psychological moment. This pinpointed the date of composition as 621 B.C. (the date of
Josiah’s reformation) or shortly before. Thus arose document D (as it came to be called), entirely
separate in origin from J or E, and framed to support governmental policy by means of its
references (see chap. 12) to the “city which Jehovah shall choose.” This made the roster of
“sources” for the Pentateuch include three documents: E (the earliest), J, and the late seventh-
century document D.
Strictly speaking, however, De Wette did not belong to the Documentary School, but rather to
the Fragmentary Theorists. The Fragmentary Theory of the origin of the Pentateuch was first
propounded in 1792 (Introduction to the Pentateuch and Joshua) by a Scottish Roman Catholic
priest named Alexander Geddes. Geddes held that the Torah was composed in the Solomonic era
from many separate fragments, some of which were as old as Moses, or even older and then were
fitted into a historical context.
Geddes’ views were adopted by Johann Vater (Kommentar uber den Pentateuch, 1802), who
analyzed the book of Genesis alone into no less than thirty-nine fragments (which of course
involved the division of E into diverse elements). While some fragments dated from the Mosaic
age, the final combination and arrangement did not take place until the time of the Babylonian
Exile (587–538 B.C.). The compelling reason for this later date derives from these passages in the
Torah (i.e., Lev. 26:27–45 and Deut. 28:58–63) which predict the Babylonian captivity and the
later restoration from Exile. Even the predictions contained in Gen. 49 would imply a later
fulfillment after the prediction had been fulfilled. It should be noted, however, that Deut. 28:64–
68 was not actually fulfilled until the first and second revolt of the Jews against the Roman
powers, which resulted in the Jews being scattered throughout the Mediteranean and the Near
East. (Cf. Chap. 18, pp. 281–82) De Wette fell in line with this type of source analysis, alleging
that the historical records of Judges, Samuel, and Kings did not betray the existence of
Pentateuchal legislation (since the laws of Moses were consistently ignored as if non-existent).
Therefore there could not have been any such laws until the later Jewish monarchy.
There were no major changes in the development of the Documentary Hypothesis between De
Wette and Hupfeld. During this intervening period, certain other theories of Pentateuchal
composition found able advocates. The Supplementary Theory, advocated by Ewald, Bleek, and
Delitzsch, assumed the existence of one basic document or body of tradition (E) which underlay
all the rest and which dated from about 1050–950 B.C., i.e., from the time of Saul, David, and
Solomon. But this earlier material acquired additions and supplements by the later author of J,
who left the earlier E material largely unaltered as he incorporated it with his own.
Heinrich Ewald (of Gottingen and Tubingen) in his Komposition der Genesis (The Composition
of Genesis, 1823) stressed that the essential basis of Genesis was very early, even if not quite
Mosaic. He discounted Eichhorn’s use of repetitions and headings in the Hebrew text to prove
diverse authorship, for he pointed out that early Arabic works (the unity of whose authorship was
unquestioned) employed similar techniques as characteristic traits of Semitic style. In his
Geschichte Israels (The History of Israel, 1840), he expressed the view that Moses personally
composed the Decalogue (Ex. 20) and a few of the oldest laws. Genesis 14 and Num. 33 were
also of very ancient origin. But these earlier materials were supplemented by a Book of
Covenants, composed by an anonymous Judean in the period of the Judges. In the time of
Solomon came a Book of Origins written by an anonymous Levite, containing much of the
material of document E. A third supplement came in the ninth century (the time of Elijah) in the
form of a biography of Moses. Later still came a prophetic narrator, and lastly a Judean from the
time of Uzziah (middle eighth century) who introduced the name “Yahweh” in numerous places
and reworked the whole corpus as final editor. This 1840 work of Ewald’s actually involved a
departure from the Supplementary Theory to the Crystallization Theory, a modification which
regarded each successive contributor to the Mosaic corpus as reworking the entire body of
materials, rather than simply adding his own isolated contributions here and there. Thus by
successive layers of molecules, a sort of literary “crystal” was built up. (Other advocates of the
Crystallization Theory were August Knobel [1861] and Eberhard Schrader [1869], who
simplified the growth process somewhat in their treatments of the Pentateuch.)
The second Supplementarist mentioned above was Friederich Bleek, who in 1822 came out with
an extension of literary source analysis to the book of Joshua, thus giving rise to the term
Hexateuch (“six volume”) as the form in which the Mosaic tradition found its final written form,
rather than in any mere five-volume Pentateuch. In 1836 he published his observations on
Genesis, in which he granted that some passages in it were genuinely Mosaic. The first
considerable supplementation came in the time of the United Monarchy (tenth century) when an
anonymous compiler brought together the earliest form of Genesis. A second important redaction
came in the period of King Josiah (approximately 630 or 620 B.C.) by the anonymous compiler
of the book of Deuteronomy, who incorporated Joshua also to form the Hexateuch. Bleek later
published a complete Old Testament introduction, the second edition of which (appearing in
1865) was soon translated into English (1869). In this work he took a stand against some of the
most unwarranted extremes of the literary criticism then in vogue; yet he made many unwise and
unjustified concessions to the whole Documentarian approach.
As for Franz Delitzsch, the third Supplementarist scholar mentioned above, he was far more
conservative in tendency than were Ewald and Bleek. In his commentary on Genesis, appearing
in 1852, he advanced the view that all portions of the Pentateuch attributed by the text itself to
Mosaic authorship were genuinely his. The remaining laws represented authentic Mosaic
tradition, but were not codified by the priests until after the conquest of Canaan. The non-Mosaic
parts of document E were probably composed by Eleazar (the third son of Aaron), who
incorporated the book of the covenant (Ex. 20:23–23:33). A still later hand supplemented this
work, including Deuteronomy with it. Delitzsch produced a series of excellent commentaries on
most of the books of the Old Testament (some of them in collaboration with Karl Friedrich Keil,
a pupil of Hengstenberg’s). In the latter part of his career (1880), Delitzsch shifted to a modified
form of the regnant Documentary Hypothesis. (Incidentally, Franz Delitzsch is not to be
confused with his son, Friedrich Delitzsch, who distinguished himself particularly in the field of
Assyriology, and who held somewhat more liberal views of Old Testament criticism than did his
father.)
Mention was made in the previous paragraph of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, the leader of the
conservative wing of German biblical scholarship. He was a very able defender of the Mosaic
authorship of all five books of Moses, and he skillfully refuted the standard arguments for
diverse sources which had been purveyed in scholarly circles since the days of Astruc and
Eichhorn. His most influential work was translated into English in 1847 as The Genuineness of
the Pentateuch, and it did much to bolster the conservative position. As has already been
mentioned, he exerted a profound influence upon Friedrich Keil, who became the foremost
conservative Old Testament scholar in the German-speaking world during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. In America the Princeton Seminary scholars Joseph Addison Alexander and
William Henry Green vigorously upheld the same viewpoint, and subjected the Documentarian
School to devastating criticism which has never been successfully rebutted by those of Liberal
persuasion.
In 1853 appeared the epoch-making work of Hermann Hupfeld, Die Quellen der Genesis (The
Sources of Genesis). His contribution to the discussion resulted in what has been termed the
“Copernican revolution in the history of the Documentary Theory.” In the first place he
subjected document E to a thorough reexamination, and distinguished in it two distinct sources:
one (E2) consisting of those rather considerable portions of the Elohist which greatly resembled J
in style, vocabulary, and type of subject matter, and which occasionally seemed to contain
allusions to material also found in (the presumably later) J. Indeed, if it were not for the divine
name (Elohim), it would be very difficult to tell such passages from J. (It should be observed that
the admission of the existence of such passages as these dangerously undermined the soundness
of using the divine names Elohim and Jahweh as a valid criterion for source division.) Hupfeld
therefore segregated such portions (beginning at Gen. 20) from the rest of the E corpus, which
latter he adjudged to be the earliest and called the “Grundschrift” (“basic document”) and
designated as El. This El document roughly corresponds with what later criticism renamed P, or
the Priestly Code. The later E2 (which later came to be designated simply as E) was still a bit
earlier than J (the Jahwist). D (the Deuteronomic work) was of course the latest (dating from
Josiah’s time). Therefore the correct order of the “documents” was for Hupfeld as follows:
PEJD.
It should be mentioned here that Hupfeld was not the first to originate this idea of E division, but
was preceded by Karl David Ilgen of Jena, who in 1798 published a work setting forth the view
that Genesis was made up of seventeen different documents, among the authors of which were
two Elohists and one Jahwist. This work, however, was a product of the Fragmentary School and
did not carry very wide or lasting influence.
Hupfeld’s Quellen also emphasized the continuity of the supposed documents El, E2 , and J, and
tried to demonstrate that when segregated by themselves, the sections of Genesis assigned to
each of the three made good sense and could stand in their own right as separate works. But most
noteworthy of all was Hupfeld’s emphasis upon a hypothetical redactor (i.e., a final editor) who
rearranged and supplemented the whole corpus of Genesis through Numbers and who accounted
for all the instances where J passages came up with words or phrases supposedly characteristic of
E, and vice versa. In other words, wherever the theory ran into trouble with the facts or ran
counter to the actual data of the text itself, the bungling hand of R (the alleged anonymous
redactor) was brought in to save the situation.
Hupfeld’s contributions provoked new interest in the Documentary Theory among scholarly
circles. Particular attention was devoted to document El, Hupfeld’s Grundschrift. First of all
appeared the discussion of Karl Heinrich Graf in 1866. Like his teacher, Eduard Reuss, Graf
believed that this Priestly Code in the Pentateuch contained legislation which was of later origin
than Deuteronomy itself (621 B.C.), for the reason that D shows no acquaintance with the legal
portions of P (the Priestly Code), although it does reflect the laws of J and E. Hence we are to
regard the legislation of P as dating from the time of the Exile (587–539 B.C.). The historical
portions of P, however, were undoubtedly very early. Thus the order of the “documents” with
Graf turned out to be: historical—P, E, J, D, and legal—P. He felt that E was supplemented by J,
and then in Josiah’s time El was redacted by the author of D.
But P was not destined to remain long in the split condition in which Graf had left it. A Dutch
scholar, Abraham Kuenen, in his De Godsdienst van Israel (The Religion of Israel, 1869) argued
very forcefully for the unity of P, insisting that the historical portions of this “document” could
not legitimately be separated from the legal. And since Graf had proved the exilic or post-exilic
origin of the priestly legislation, therefore the entire P document had to be late. This meant that
what Hupfeld had determined to be the earliest portion of the Pentateuch (his Grundschrift)
turned out to be altogether the latest portion of all, which received its final definitive form when
Ezra assembled the entire Pentateuchal corpus in time for the public Bible reading ceremony
mentioned in Neh. 8. The new order of the “documents” was now: J, E, D, and P. J was the basic
document of the Torah (largely because of J’s “anthropomorphic” presentation of God, which
was thought to reflect an earlier stage in the evolution of Israel’s religion), and E was
incorporated into it afterward. D was added next in Josiah’s time, just before the end of the
Jewish monarchy. During the ministry of Ezekiel in the exilic period, the Holiness Code (H),
consisting of Lev. 17–26, was formulated as the earliest portion of P; the rest of P originated in
the late sixth century and the first half of the fifth century-nearly a thousand years after the death
of Moses, in the time of Ezra.
After the work of Hupfeld, Graf, and Kuenen, the stage was set for the definitive formulation of
the newer Documentary Theory by Julius Wellhausen, whose most important contributions were
Die Komposition des Hexateuchs (The Composition of the Hexateuch), which appeared in 1876,
and Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Introduction to the History of Israel), which came out
in 1878 (Berlin: Druck & Verlag von G. Reimer). Although Wellhausen contributed no
innovations to speak of, he restated the Documentary Theory with great skill and persuasiveness,
supporting the JEDP sequence upon an evolutionary basis. This was the age in which Charles
Darwin’s Origin of Species was capturing the allegiance of the scholarly and scientific world,
and the theory of development from primitive animism to sophisticated monotheism as set forth
by Wellhausen and his followers fitted admirably into Hegelian dialecticism (a prevalent school
in contemporary philosophy) and Darwinian evolutionism. The age was ripe for the
Documentary Theory, and Wellhausen’s name became attached to it as the classic exponent of it.
The impact of his writings soon made itself felt throughout Germany (claiming such luminaries
as Kautzsch, Smend, Giesebrecht, Budde, Stade, and Cornill) and found increasing acceptance in
both Great Britain and America.
In England it was William Robertson Smith (The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 1881)
who first interpreted Wellhausianism to the public. Samuel R. Driver gave it the classic
formulation for the English-speaking world (Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament,
1891), although he was personally of somewhat more conservative theological convictions than
the architects of the Documentary Theory had been. The same is true of George Adam Smith,
who counted himself an Evangelical in theology and yet devoted his skilled pen to a
popularization of the Documentarian type of approach to the Old Testament prophets (notably
Isaiah and the Minor Prophets, for which he wrote the exposition in the Expositor’s Bible edited
by W. R. Nicoll). In the United States the most notable champion of the new school was Charles
Augustus Briggs of Union Seminary (The Higher Criticism or the Hexateuch [New York:
Scribner’s, 1893]), seconded by his able collaborator, Henry Preserved Smith.
As we shall see in the next chapter, the twentieth century has witnessed a vigorous reaction
against Wellhausen and the Documentary Hypothesis, and general confidence in it has been
somewhat undermined, even in Liberal circles. Nevertheless, no other systematic account of the
origin and development of the Pentateuch has yet been formulated so lucidly and convincingly as
to command the general adherence of the scholarly world. For want of a better theory, therefore,
most nonconservative institutions continue to teach the Wellhausian theory, at least in its general
outlines, as if nothing had happened in Old Testament scholarship since the year 1880. In
England, W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson’s Introduction to the Books of the Old
Testament (London: SPCK, 1934) was basically Wellhausian, although some uncertainties are
expressed concerning the comparative dating of the “documents” (J-E may have been
contemporaneous with D, and H may have been a bit earlier than D). In American Julius A.
Bewer’s Literature of the Old Testament (New York: Longmans, 1922) and Robert H. Pfeiffer’s
Introduction to the Old Testament (1948) adhered quite loyally to classic Wellhausianism
(although Pfeiffer isolated a new document, S, a pessimistic Edomite source, and also dated the
Ten Commandments as later than D, rather than constituting a part of E).
In Germany itself the influence of Form Criticism (which will be discussed in the next chapter)
has resulted in an attempt to synthesize the Form Critical approach of Gunkel and Gressman with
the Documentarianism of Wellhausen. This synthesis appears most strongly in the work of Otto
Eissfeldt (Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1934, English ed. The Old Testament, an
Introduction [New York: Harper & Row, 1965]). In Scandinavia, Aage Bentzen of Copenhagen
(Introduction to the Old Testament, 1948) holds mainly to the type of synthesis which Eissfeldt
had attempted; but his earlier compatriot, Johannes Pedersen, as well as Sigmund Mowinckel of
Oslo and Ivan Engnell of Uppsala, Sweden, inclines far more definitely toward a form-critical or
history-of-tradition approach than to Wellhausian source criticism. In England and the United
States, however, the rule of Wellhausen continues more or less supreme in most nonconservative
schools, and makes its influence felt in many of the more or less conservative schools of the old-
line denominations. Therefore we must treat the Documentary Theory as still a live issue today,
even though Liberal scholarship on the European continent has administered well-nigh fatal
blows to nearly all its foundations.

Description of the Four Documents of the Documentary Hypothesis

J—written about 850 B.C. by an unknown writer in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He was
especially interested in personal biography, characterized by vivid delineation of character. He
often portrayed or referred to God in anthropomorphic terms (i.e., as if He possessed the body,
parts, and passions of a human being). He also had a prophet-like interest in ethical and
theological reflection, but little interest in sacrifice or ritual.
E—written about 750 B.C. by an unknown writer in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. He was
more objective than J in his narrative style and was less consciously tinged with ethical and
theological reflection. He tended rather to dwell upon concrete particulars (or the origins of
names or customs of particular importance to Israelite culture). In Genesis, E shows an interest in
ritual and worship, and he represents God as communicating through dreams and visions (rather
than through direct anthropomorphic contact, after the fashion of J). In Exodus through
Numbers, E exalts Moses as a unique miracle worker, with whom God could communicate in
anthropomorphic guise.
About 650 B.C. an unknown redactor combined J and E into a single document: J-E.
D—composed, possibly under the direction of the high priest Hilkiah, as an official program for
the party of reform sponsored by King Josiah in the revival of 621 B.C. Its object was to compel
all the subjects of the kingdom of Judah to abandon their local sanctuaries on the “high places”
and bring all their sacrifices and religious contributions to the temple in Jerusalem. This
document was strongly under the influence of the prophetic movement, particularly of Jeremiah.
Members of this same Deuteronomic school later reworked the historical accounts recorded in
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
P—composed in various stages, all the way from Ezekiel, with his Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26)
ca. 570 B.C. (known as H), to Ezra, “the ready scribe in the law of Moses” under whose guidance
the latest priestly sections were added to the Torah. P is concerned with a systematic account of
the origins and institutions of the Israelite theocracy. It shows a particular interest in origins, in
genealogical lists, and details of sacrifice and ritual.

Summary of the Dialectical Development of the Documentary

Hypothesis

1. Astruc said that different divine names point to different sources—J and E division; this idea
was extended more thoroughly by Eichhorn (E earlier than J).
2. De Wette defined D as a manufacture of Josiah’s time (621 B.C.).
3. Hupfeld divided up E into the earlier El (or P) and the later E2 (which more closely resembles
J). His order of documents was PEJD.
4. Graf thought that the legal portions of P were Exilic, latest of all, even though historical
portions may be early. His order of documents was: P1EJD2.
5. Kuenen felt that historical portions of P must be as late as the legal. He gave as the order of
documents: PEJD.
6. Wellhausen gave the Documentary Theory its classic expression, working out the JEDP
sequence upon a systematic evolutionary pattern.
Observe the contradictions and reversals which characterize the development of this
Documentary Theory. (1) Different divine name points to different author (Astruc, Eichhorn),
each with his own circle of interest, style, and vocabulary. (2) Same divine name (Elohim),
nevertheless employed by different authors (Hupfeld); whereas some E passages really do not
greatly differ from J in circle of interest, style, or vocabulary. (3) That Elohist (P) which most
differs from J in interest and style, must be the earliest (Jahweh being a later name for God than
Elohim). (4) No, on the contrary, this P must be latest instead of earliest (for this fits in better
with Evolutionary Theory about the development of Hebrew religion from the primitive
polytheistic to the priest-ridden monotheistic.) (5) J of course is later than E (all the critics up to
Graf); but no, J is really earlier than E (Kuenen and Wellhausen).
The most thoroughgoing refutation of the Wellhausen hypothesis to appear at the end of the
nineteenth century in America was furnished by William Henry Green of Princeton, in his Unity
of the Book of Genesis (New York: Scribner, 1895) and Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (New
York: Scribner, 1896). With great erudition and skill he showed how inadequately the hypothesis
explained the actual data of the biblical text, and upon what illogical and self-contradictory bases
the critical criteria rested.
A general discussion of the fallacies in the Documentary Theory which render it logically
untenable will be found in chapter 8. The various criteria used by the Documentarians to prove
diverse authorship will be discussed more in detail in chapters 9 and 10. Refutation of specific
arguments dealing with particular books in the Pentateuch will be found in the chapters (14–18)
which deal with those books.

7
Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch in the
Twentieth Century
PERHAPS THE MOST helpful way to present the trends of Old Testament scholarship between
1890 and 1950 is to arrange the effect of their contributions upon the structure of the Graf-
Wellhausen Hypothesis. Hence the order followed will be topical rather than strictly
chronological.
As we have already indicated, much of modern scholarship has remained loyal to the methods of
Documentary analysis, and their innovations have been limited more or less to isolating a few
more “Documents” beyond the time-honored four, JEDP. Thus, for example, Otto Eissfeldt in
his Hexateuchsynopse (1922) thought he discerned within J a Lay Source (L)—more or less
equivalent to Julius Smend’s J1 (Die Erzahlung des Hexateuchs auf ihre Quellen untersucht,
1912). This L (Laienschrift as Eissfeldt called it) reflected a nomadic, Rechabite ideal (cf. the
reference to Rechab in 2 Kings 10 and the Rechabite ideal in Jer. 35:1–19), which was
completely hostile to the Canaanite way of life. He concluded that L arose in the time of Elijah
(ca. 860 B.C.) and found its way into Judges and Samuel as well.
Somewhat similar to L was the new document K (for Kenite). This dealt mostly with certain
details in the life of Moses, or described relations between the Israelites and the Kenites. It was
isolated by Julius Morgenstern (The Oldest Document of the Hexateuch, 1927), and identified by
him as the basis for the reforms of King Asa (ca. 890 B.C.) as recorded in 1 Kings 15:9–15. Even
Robert H. Pfeiffer (as already mentioned) announced in his Introduction to the Old Testament
the discovery of a document S (for Mount Seir, the most prominent landmark in Edom) which
appeared in the J and E sections of Gen. 1–11 and also in the J and E portions of Gen. 14–38.
This supposedly appeared in the reign of Solomon (ca. 950 B.C.), but later additions (made from
600 to 400 B.C.) composed an S2. Thus we have as a result of the industry of the post-
Wellhausians the additional letters K, L, and S, largely drawn off from J or E.
For the most part, however, the trend of twentieth-century scholarship has been toward the
repudiation of the Graf-Wellhausen theory, either in whole or in part. In order to sort out these
attacks and arrange them in a systematic fashion, we may imagine the Documentary Hypothesis
in the form of a beautiful Grecian portico supported by five pillars: (1) the criterion of divine
names (Jahweh and Elohim) as an indication of diverse authorship; (2) the origin of J, E, and P
as separate written documents, composed at different periods of time; (3) the priority of J to E in
time of composition; (4) the separate origin of E as distinct from J; (5) the origin of D in the
reign of Josiah (621 B.C.). Let us consider the criticisms leveled at each of these pillars in the
above-mentioned order.

Against the Validity of Divine Names as a Criterion of Source

As early as 1893 August Klostermann (Der Pentateuch) rejected the inerrancy of the Masoretic
Hebrew text in the transmission of the divine names, and criticized their use as a means of
identifying documentary sources. But the first scholar to make a thoroughgoing investigation of
the relationship of the MT to the LXX was Johannes Dahse in his “Textkritische Bedenken gegen
den Ausgangspunkt der Pentateuchkritik” (“Textual-critical Doubts About the Initial Premise of
Pentateuchal Criticism”) in a 1903 issue of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft. Here he showed
that the LXX has a noncorresponding name (i.e., theos for Yahweh or kyrios for Elohim) in no
less than 180 instances. This means that the MT is not sufficiently inerrant in the textual
transmission of the names to serve as the basis for such subtle and precise source division as the
Documentarians have attempted. (This appeal to the LXX was all the more damaging because of
the high prestige that version enjoyed as over against the MT in matters of textual emendation.
Because the Documentarians themselves had been using it so freely for correction of the Hebrew
text, it was more than embarrassing for them to be exposed as naively assuming the inerrancy of
the transmission of the divine names in the Hebrew Torah.)
In England, a Jewish attorney named Harold M. Wiener began a series of studies in 1909 which
dealt with this same troublesome discrepancy between the LXX and the MT. He argued that this
uncertainty as to the correct name in so many different passages rendered the use of names
impractical and unsafe for the purposes of source division. Wiener also discussed the alleged
discrepancies between the various laws of the Pentateuchal legislation, showing that these so-
called disagreements were capable of easy reconciliation and required no diversity of authorship.
While he conceded the presence of some non-Mosaic elements, he insisted upon the essential
Mosaicity of the Pentateuch.
The eminent successor of Kuenen at the University of Leiden, B. D. Eerdmans, also admitted
that the force of this argument derived from Septuagintal data, and definitely asserted the
impossibility of using the divine names as a clue to separate documents (Altestamentliche
Studien, vol. 1, Die Komposition der Genesis, 1908). In this same work he attacked Wellhausian
source division from an entirely different approach, that of comparative religions. He felt he
could trace a primitive polytheistic background behind many of the sagas in Genesis, indicating a
far greater antiquity in origin than either an 850 B.C. J or a 750 B.C. E. Even the ritual elements
embodied in P were much older than the final codification of the laws themselves, because they
reflected ideas belonging to a very early stage of religious development. The codifying priests
included provisions of such antiquity that they themselves no longer fully understood their
significance.
According to Eerdmans, the Mosaic era should be recognized as the time when much of the
Levitical ritual had its origin, rather than in the Exilic or post-exilic age (as the Documentarians
had supposed). Moreover, from the standpoint of literary criticism, the fundamental unity of the
Genesis sagas was flagrantly violated by the artificial source division practiced by the Graf-
Wellhausen school. Eerdmans therefore withdrew from the Documentary School altogether and
denied the validity of the Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen theory in the preface of the above-mentioned
work. He felt that the earliest written unit in the Pentateuch was a polytheistic Book of Adam
(commencing at Gen. 5:1) which originated sometime before 700 B.C. (although of course the
oral tradition upon which it was based was many centuries older). Later there was united with
this another polytheistic work which he called an Israel recension. But after the “discovery” of
Deuteronomy, these earlier writings were re-edited according to a monotheistic reinterpretation,
and after the Exile this entire work received some further expansions. In this alternative to the
Graf-Wellhausen theory, we see a revival of the old supplementary approach, combined with an
exaggerated dependence upon comparative religion techniques. But at least Eerdmans showed
how flimsy were the ‘assured results’ of Wellhausen scholarship under the impact of a fresh
investigation of the data of the Hebrew text. The revered triad of J, E, and P was no longer so
secure upon its pedestal.
The attack of Sigmund Mowinckel, a Norwegian scholar, against the J-E source division was
from a different standpoint, that of Form Criticism (see next section). In two articles published in
the Zeitschrift fur Altertumswissenschaft (1930) he denied the independence of the J and E
traditions from each other, and denied also that E was of North Israelite origin. He asserted that
E was simply a religious adaptation of J from the standpoint of a Judahite school. The stories of
ancient times contained in E always depend upon the narratives contained in J, and E quite often
employs Jahweh as a name for God. In this connection he denied that Ex. 3:14 represented a
promulgation of Jahweh as a new name for God, but on the contrary it presupposed that Jahweh
was already known to the Hebrews. (He shows from Josh. 24:2–4, an E passage, that the author
knew that Abraham had lived in Mesopotamia, even though all of this account in Gen. 11 had
been assigned to J.) Mowinckel concluded that E was really not an author at all, but an oral
tradition which continued the same body of material as that which found an earlier written form
in J. E then signifies a long drawn-out process between the period when J found written form and
the final inscripturation of the E material after the fall of the Jewish monarchy.
W. E Albright expresses skepticism concerning the reliability of the divine-names criterion,
saying, “The discovery of relatively wide limits of textual variation antedating the third century
B.C. makes the minute analysis of the Pentateuch which became fashionable after Wellhausen
completely absurd. While it is quite true that there is less evidence of recensional differences in
the Pentateuch than there is, for example, in Samuel-Kings, there is already more than enough to
warn against elaborate hypothetical analyses and against finding different ‘sources’ and
‘documents’ whenever there appears to be any flaw or inconsistency in the received text. Such a
subjective approach to literary-historical problems was always suspect and has now become
irrational.” (While Albright remains basically Documentarian in his acceptance of J, E, and P as
separate written sources, he feels that they must be identified by other criteria than the use of
Yahweh or Elohim alone, and that their history was somewhat more complicated than
Wellhausen supposed. Cf. Albright, p. 34.)

Against the Origin of J, E, and P as Separate Documents

Hermann Gunkel was associated with Hugo Gressmann as a founder of the new school of
Formgeschichte (Form Criticism). In New Testament criticism this approach assumed that
during a period of oral tradition, A.D. 30–60, stories and sayings circulated as separate units in
Christian circles. Gradually these became altered and embellished according to the theological
views current in each circle, as the discerning critic can discover as he seeks to get back to the
original nonmiraculous and unembellished kernel of each of these units. (Unfortunately for this
method, however, the opinions and tastes of the critic himself inevitably influence his procedure
in a very subjective way.) Gunkel’s most important contributions in the field of Pentateuchal
criticism were Die Sagen der Genesis (The Sagas of Genesis), 1901; a fifty-page contribution to
Hinneberg’s Die Kultur der Gegenwart entitled “Die altisraelitische Literatur” (“The Ancient
Israelite Literature”) published in 1906; and his 1911 work, Die Schriften des Alten Testaments.
Form Criticism, according to his formulation of it, maintains: (1) no accurate literary history is
possible for the older period (attempts to reconstruct the sequence of the development of written
documents have broken down under the impact of contrary data from the texts themselves, and
we really know nothing for certain about these hypothetical documents of the Graf-Wellhausen
hypothesis); (2) the only practical approach to the Pentateuchal literature is the synthetic creative
(rather than the analytic critical of the Documentarians), whereby we must define the various
types of categories or genres (Gattungen) to which the original material belonged in its oral
stage, and then follow through the probable course of the development of each of these oral units
until the final written form which they assumed in the exilic period or thereafter (note how
completely this approach erases the fine distinctions which Wellhausen had drawn between J, E,
and P); and (3) as a practitioner of the methods of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule
(comparative religionist school), Gunkel paid strict attention to the parallel phenomena of the
religion and literature of ancient Israel’s pagan neighbors, where the development of these
Gattungen (literary genres) could be more clearly discerned and illustrated. In the light of the
Egyptian and Mesopotamian materials it was possible, he felt, to ascertain with fair precision the
Sitz im Leben (life situation) of each example of these different types and see through what
process they evolved in their subsequent history. Thus, Genesis was really a compilation of
sagas, for the most part, and all these were handed down in a fairly fluid oral form until final
reduction to written form at a late period.
It will be observed that this Formgeschichte approach throws the JEP analysis into discard as an
artificial and unhistorical attempt at analysis by men who simply did not understand how ancient
literature like the Torah originated. Insofar as it demonstrates the artificiality of the Wellhausian
source analysis, Gunkel’s treatment of the Pentateuch represents a certain gain, from the
Conservative viewpoint. He should likewise be credited for recognizing the great antiquity of
much of the oral tradition material which lay behind the text of the Torah.
But Gunkel’s assumption that the books of Moses found a final written form only as late as the
Exile seems to ignore the cumulative evidence that the Hebrews were a highly literate people
from the time of Moses onward. To be sure, the earliest scrap of written Hebrew thus far
discovered by archaeology is the schoolboy’s exercise known as the Gezer Calendar (ca. 925
B.C.), but nearly all of Israel’s neighbors were recording all types of literature in written form for
many centuries before that period, and even the underprivileged Semitic laborers at the turquoise
mines in the Sinai Peninsula were scrawling their alphabetic inscriptions as early as 1500 B.C., if
not earlier. Even up at the northernmost tip of the Canaanite area, at Ugarit, the contemporaries
of Moses were recording their pagan scriptures in alphabetic characters. It requires an excessive
credulity to believe that the Hebrews alone were so backward that they did not know how to
reduce to writing their most important legal and religious institutions until after 600 B.C. The
Pentateuchal record itself abounds in references to writing, and portrays Moses as a man of
letters. Even a common term for “officer,” repeatedly used in Ex. 5 (a J passage) and elsewhere
in the Pentateuch, is the Hebrew shōṭēr, which is derived from the same root as the common
Babylonian verb “to write” (shaṭāru). Therefore this feature in Gunkel’s theory seems to be beset
with insuperable difficulty in view of this textual evidence. Furthermore, the fact that
Deuteronomy follows a form that was discontinued after 1200 B.C.—the Hittite type of the
suzerainty treaty—is proof positive that it could not have been composed after 1200, when
suzerainty treaty forms followed a different pattern (no historical prologue, divine witness
between the stipulations and the curses, the series of blessings for covenant keeping). Failure to
defer to this clear evidence means that the late-date theory goes counter to the evidence of
comparative literature and therefore must surrender the claim to be “scientific.”
It should be pointed out, moreover, that the comparative literature of the ancient Near East serves
to render highly questionable some of the basic presuppositions of Form Criticism. Thus, the
doctrinaire premise of the Gattungsforschung methodology is to look for small fragments and
scattered utterances as being the original form which the oral tradition took at the very
beginning. But in so early an Egyptian work as the Admonitions of Ipuwer (now dated at 2200
B.C.), we find long and extended tirades, rather than the short, disconnected apothegms which
Form Criticism would lead us to expect. In the Babylonian oracles also (as Sidney Smith points
out in Isaiah XL-LV, [Toronto: Oxford, 1944], pp. 6–16) occur long connected passages.
Kitchen says in The New Bible Dictionary, the practitioners of Formgeschichte “have failed
entirely to distinguish between the complementary functions of written transmission (i.e., down
through time) and oral dissemination (i.e., making it known over a wide area to contemporaries),
and have confused the two as ‘oral tradition,’ wrongly overstressing the oral element in Near
Eastern transmission.”
In 1924, Max Lohr published the first of his series on “Investigations of the Problem of the
Hexateuch” entitled Der Priestercodex in der Genesis (The Priestly Code in Genesis). By means
of minute exegetical study of the so-called P passages in Genesis, he showed that no independent
existence of such a source could be established. Its material was so inextricably involved in the J
and E sections, that it could never have stood alone. Lohr even went on to reject the Graf-
Wellhausen analysis altogether, and came to the conclusion that the Pentateuch in general was
composed by Ezra and his assistants in Babylon, drawing upon a heterogeneous store of written
materials from the pre-exilic period. These materials included sacrificial laws and other ritual
directions, religious and secular narratives of various sorts, and sundry prophecies and
genealogical lists. But these prior written materials were incapable of identification with any
large, specific documents such as Wellhausen’s J and E.
In 1931 Johannes Pedersen of Copenhagen came out with a radical critique of the Documentary
Theory entitled Die Auffassung vom Alten Testament (The Concept of the Old Testament). In this
work he rejected Wellhausian Source Criticism as inadequate to describe the culture of the
ancient Hebrews. He made four specific points.
1. In such J and E stories as the communications between Jahweh and Abraham, the cycle
connected with Sodom, the Jacob and Esau narrative, the Tamar and Judah episode—all
accounts of this sort are of very ancient origin, even though they did not receive their present
written form until after the Exile. (This meant that J and E components of this category were
both much more ancient than the 850 B.C. and 750 B.C. dates of the Documentarians, and also
much later, i.e., contemporaneous with the Priestly contributions.)
2. It must be said that in general, J and E cannot be maintained as separate narratives without
artificially imposing an Occidental viewpoint upon the ancient Semitic narrative techniques and
doing violence to Israelite psychology.
3. In document D it is impossible to make out a clear distinction (as the Documentarians had
attempted to do) between older and newer elements. On the contrary, the anti-Canaanite bias
which pervades Deuteronomy shows it to be the product of post-exilic conditions (for only after
the return could such a self-contained Israelite community have arisen such as D depicts). This
means that we must abandon the older date of Josiah’s reign for the composition of
Deuteronomy.
4. As to document P, it shows post-exilic composition clearly enough from its schematic
arrangement and its style of diction; but on the other hand it contains many legal regulations
which point to pre-exilic conditions. Particularly is this true of the social laws. In other words, all
the “sources” in the Torah are both pre-exilic and post-exilic. We cannot make out the 850 B.C. J
document and the 750 B.C. E document which Wellhausen tried to isolate in the Mosaic material.
We can only conjecture that the earliest nucleus of the Torah was the Moses saga and the
Passover legend contained in Ex. 1–15.
In 1945 in Uppsala, Sweden, appeared a work by Ivan Engnell called Gamla testamentet, en
traditionshistorisk inledning (The Old Testament, a Traditio-historical Introduction), which
more or less followed the line which Pedersen had taken. Engnell boldly condemned the
Wellhausian fabric of criticism as representing a modern, anachronistic book view, a purely
artificial interpretation in modern categories which do not apply to ancient Semitic material. He
asserted that an adequate treatment of this Hebrew literature required a radical break with that
whole approach. He then made the following points.
1. There never were any parallel, continuous documents of prior origin from which the Torah
was finally composed in its post-exilic form.
2. The evidence of the LXX text shows the unsoundness of the criterion of divine names for
Source Division; and even as they have been marked off by Wellhausen, these supposed sources
are by no means consistent in their use of the names for God. We must understand that the true
explanation for the usage of these names is to be found in the context in which they occur, for it
is the context that determines which name is most appropriate, as Conservative scholars have
always maintained.
3. Rather than being of Judahite origin, Deuteronomy more strongly suggests North Israelite
background. It is most unlikely that D could ever have been concocted in the Jerusalem temple,
in view of the prominence it gives to Mt. Gerizim rather than Mt. Zion.
4. The only safe division that can be made of the Pentateuchal material is (a) a P-work extending
from Genesis through Numbers and evidencing characteristics which point to a P-type school of
tradition; and (b) a D-work (Deuteronomy through 2 Kings) which shows a different style of
treatment and points to a definite D circle of traditionists. The legal material in Exodus through
Numbers originated from the oracle-giving and judicial functions of the various local
sanctuaries, where along with oral tradition some early written traditions were cultivated.
Genesis is made up of an Abraham cycle, a Jacob cycle, and a Joseph complex. Gunkel’s
analyses of the individual stories and legend cycles are trustworthy. These were originally cultic
legends connected with different sanctuaries. Doubtless, the book of the covenant (Ex. 20:23–
23:19) was one such collection; Ex. 34:17–26 (the so-called ritual Decalogue) was another; and
the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26) represents still another complex. P represents a southern
tradition, whereas the Deuteronomic work (Deuteronomy through 2 Kings) represents a northern
tradition although the final form imposed on it reflects the viewpoint of those who wished the
cultus to be centralized in Jerusalem.
5. Oral tradition played a major role in all this until the final reduction to writing. We must
therefore reckon, not with written sources and redactors, but with units of oral tradition, circles
of tradition, and schools within these traditionist circles. Continuous written documents would
necessarily have exhibited consistent differences of style and purely linguistic constants which
would occur only in the document concerned. But as it is, no consistent distinctives of this sort
can be made out, and those which the Documentarians claim to have discovered can be
maintained only by question-begging devices such as redactors and glosses and later
emendations. (This of course implied that the elaborate word lists and tables such as are drawn
up in Driver’s ILOT must be discarded as unsound.)
Another interesting writer who perhaps could be listed in this group is Wilhelm Moeller, who
was originally a convinced adherent of the Wellhausen school. But after a careful reexamination
of the evidence, he became impressed with the inadequacy of the Documentary Hypothesis in the
light of the actual data. His first attack was published in 1899 in German under the title of
Historico-critical Considerations in Opposition to the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis by a Former
Adherent. A more powerful onslaught appeared in 1912: Wider den Bann der Quellenscheidung
(Against the Spell of Source Division). Here he demonstrated the weakness of the arguments for
the Documentary Hypothesis and cogently argued the case for the unity of the Pentateuch. In his
1925 work, Ruckbeziehungen des funften Buches Mosis auf die vier ersten Bucher (Backward
References of the Fifth Book of Moses to the First Four Books), he showed that Deuteronomy
contains numerous references to Genesis through Numbers which presuppose their existence
prior to the composition of Deuteronomy and their availability to the author himself. But perhaps
Moeller should not be listed with these other critics, since his investigations led him back to the
position of the historic Christian church in regard to the authorship of the Pentateuch, and he
thereby became an adherent of the Conservative cause. All the others, of course, were (or are)
Liberals.
Yehezkel Kauftnann of Hebrew University in the 1940s and 1950s reexamined the assumption of
the Wellhausen school that P omitted all mention of the centralization of the sanctuary because it
took this centralization for granted. He found this to be utterly unwarranted circular reasoning
and argued that monotheism characterized Israel’s religion from the beginning. (Cf. his Religion
of Israel [Chicago: U. of Chicago, 1960], p. 205, quoted in this text on p. 110.) Yet he still
accepted the four documents as separate entities, even though the priority of D to much of P
could no longer be sustained.

Against the Priority of J to E

In his 1920 work entitled Deuteronomy and the Decalogue, R. H. Kennett advanced the
argument that E was really the earliest of the written documents rather than J, and was composed
about 650 B.C. for the mixed or hybrid population of North Israel (subsequent to the deportation
of the ten tribes in 722 B.C.). J was written a few decades later, down in the Hebron area as a sort
of counterblast to Josiah’s reforms (with his insistence on the sole legitimacy of the Jerusalem
temple); its date was about 615 B.C. This J was probably the document referred to by Jeremiah
8:8, “But, behold, the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely.”
It goes without saying that the views of Pedersen (see p. 105) belong also in this division, for if
all the materials of the Pentateuch are post-exilic in their final written form, there can be no more
talk of the priority of J to E. The same is true of Engnell (see pp. 105–6). If all of Genesis was
made up of legend cycles preserved at the various local sanctuaries, and if all of Exodus through
Numbers belongs to a P school of tradition, then there is no room for a J prior to E, nor indeed
for any separate written J and E at all.

Against the Independent Existence of E as a Document Later Than J

Paul Volz and Wilhelm Rudolph cooperated in 1933 in the publication of a study entitled Der
Elohist als Erzahler: ein Irrweg der Pentateuchkritik? (The Elohist as a Narrator. A Mistake in
Pentateuchal Criticism?). After a careful reexamination of the E passages, these scholars drew
the conclusion that there were really no good grounds for making out a separate, coherent E
source. They were simply parts of J or supplements to it. Volz proposed to do away with separate
J and E sources and return to something comparable to the old Supplement Hypothesis. In
Genesis we have only a single story writer (J), and E was no more than a later editor of this J
work who may possibly have inserted a few sections of his own. As for P, no stories at all
emanate from him; he was only the recorder of legislation and the composer of doctrinal sections
such as Genesis 1 and 17.
The contribution of Mowinckel (pp. 101–2) may be referred to here. E was to him no separate
document from J, but simply a Judahite religious adaptation of the Jehovistic material. E was
more of a process than a document. Likewise, Pedersen’s approach (p. 105) involved a complete
denial of the separate existence of J and E. Both represent oral material going back to the earliest
time, and together they received written form after the exile.

Against the Josianic Date for Deuteronomy

Ever since De Wette’s identification of Deuteronomy as the book of the law which was
discovered by Hilkiah in the temple and read aloud to King Josiah in 621 B.C., the Josianic date
for D was considered one of the surest of the “assured results of modern scholarship” by the
whole Wellhausen school. As Wellhausen himself declared in his Prolegomena: “About the
origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific
results can be looked for at all, it is recognized that it was composed in the same age as that in
which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah’s reformation, which took place
about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans.”
Against the background of this confidence, it is interesting to compare the treatment of the
Josianic date (so pivotal to the whole Documentary Hypothesis) accorded by the twentieth-
century critics from 1919 onward. Some of these insurgents shifted the date of D’s origin to a
much earlier period than 621 B.C., while others preferred to transfer it to the post-exilic age. But
both groups were unanimous in condemning the Josianic date as altogether unthinkable in view
of the data of the text itself and of the historical conditions known to have prevailed at that time.

Critics Preferring an Earlier Date for Deuteronomy

In 1919, Martin Kegel produced his Die Kultusreformation des Josias (Josiah’s Reformation of
the Cultus) in which he gave his grounds for considering the 621 date unsound for D. Since even
those influential leaders (such as the priesthood of the high places and the pro-idolatrous
nobility) did not raise the issue of the genuineness of Deuteronomy as an authentic work of the
great lawgiver Moses (even though they had every incentive to challenge its authenticity), it
follows that D must have been a very ancient book indeed by Josiah’s time, and must have been
known as such. (Kegel was even inclined to doubt the identification of the discovered book of
the law with Deuteronomy alone; he felt that the evidence pointed toward the inclusion of all the
other parts of the Pentateuch which were already in writing.) Furthermore, the oftrepeated
assertion that the main purpose of Josiah’s reform was to enforce worship at the central
sanctuary (the Jerusalem temple) was not at all borne out by the evidence of 2 Kings and 2
Chronicles; they show that his chief concern was the cleansing of Jehovah worship from idolatry.
In 1924, Adam C. Welch of Edinburgh pointed out that a “law of the single sanctuary” would
have been quite impractical for the seventh century B.C., for it did not reflect conditions which
prevailed at that time. Furthermore, he showed that many of the legal regulations in D were
much too primitive in character to fit in with the late Jewish monarchy. Rather than showing a
Judahite origin, some of the laws indicated a North Israelite origin. It was therefore far more
justifiable to look to the age of Solomon (tenth century B.C.) as the time when the main core, at
least, of the Deuteronomic legislation was written down. One insertion only was definitely
assignable to Josiah’s time, and that was Deut. 12:1–7 which made the central sanctuary
mandatory (a passage which was used by Josiah to sanction his reform program). But the
primary purpose of the book in its original form was to purify the cultus at all the various local
sanctuaries and thus to combat the contaminating influence of Canaanite theology and practice.
Other more recent writers who favored a pre-Josianic date for Deuteronomy include R. Brinker
(The Influence of Sanctuaries in Early Israel, pp. 189ff.), who argued that the essentially Mosaic
legislation of Deuteronomy was later supplemented by priests in the various local sanctuaries;
but its main thrust was opposition to Canaanite idolatry. Gerhard von Rad suggested that
Deuteronomy arose among circles of rural Levites and must have been completed by 701 B.C.
(Studies in Deuteronomy, 1953, p. 66). A. Westphal felt that it dated from the early part of
Hezekiah’s reign. Both Albright (The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra, 1963, p. 45) and
Eissfeldt dated Deut. 32 (the “Song of Moses”) to the time of Samuel, citing MS fragments from
4Q.
In the following decade a series of articles was issued from the pen of Edward Robertson in the
Bulletin of John Rylands Library, in 1936, 1941, 1942, and 1944, in which he defended the thesis
that at the time of conquest, the Hebrews must have entered Palestine as an organized
community possessing a nucleus of law, including the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant
(Ex. 20–23). After their settlement in Canaan, they split up into various religious communes,
each with its own special sanctuary. These various local traditions of Mosaic law were combined
by Samuel (cf. 1 Sam. 10:25) on the threshold of the establishment of the United Monarchy. This
background satisfactorily accounts for the diverse elements and inconsistencies of the
background material of the Tetrateuch. As for Deuteronomy, it was composed shortly thereafter,
about 1000 B.C., in order to cement together the new political unity. This work then was lost and
not rediscovered until the reign of Josiah.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Yehezkel Kaufmann of Jerusalem argued for the priority of P to D,
saying, “Only in D and related literature is there a clear and unmistakable influence of the
centralization idea. In the time of Hezekiah the idea began to gain favor; Josiah drew its ultimate
conclusions. Thereafter Judaism was enthralled by the image of the central sanctuary and chosen
city. It is incredible that a priestly law which evolved at this time should pass over this dominant
idea in silence. It has been shown above that there is no trace whatever of D’s centralization idea
in P; P must therefore have been composed before the age of Hezekiah.” This meant that P had
to be dated early in the eighth century or before, rather than being a product of the exilic or post-
exilic age. Kaufmann was convinced that monotheism characterized Israel’s religion from the
very first, and that the tabernacle was an authentic, historic shrine employed in the days of
Moses. “The idea that the tent is a reflex of the Second Temple is a baseless contention of
modern criticism.”

Critics Preferring a Later Date for Deuteronomy

R. H. Kennett’s work on Deuteronomy and the Decalogue has already been referred to (p. 107).
It was his thesis that the legislation of D presupposes not only J and E, but also H (which
according to the Wellhausen scheme did not arise until 570 B.C. under Ezekiel’s influence).
Particularly is this true of Deut. 12. The inference is, then, that D must have been late exilic at
the very earliest. (According to Kennett, the order of the documents was EJHDP, i.e., E—650
B.C., J—615 B.C., H—570 B.C., D—500 B.C., P—450 B.C. Contrast this with Wellhausen’s
EJHDP.)
In 1922 Gustav Holscher produced his Komposition and Ursprung des Deuteronomiums (The
Composition and Origin of Deuteronomy). In this work Holscher quite decisively denied that D
could have constituted the book of the law which Hilkiah found. The characteristic legislation of
Deuteronomy does not at all conform to the contemporary conditions prevalent in Josiah’s time.
For example, the enforcement of a single sanctuary law would have been utterly impractical
idealism before the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem and the restoration of the exiles from
Babylon to make a new beginning in the land. During the centuries preceding the exile, how
could even a visionary reformer seriously expect that whole communities in Israel which had
embraced the worship of false gods or the worship of Jehovah with images could be put to the
sword by the central government (as Deut. 13 and 17 required)? Kings and Chronicles testified to
the fact that almost every municipality in Judah was infected with this idolatry, not excluding
Jerusalem itself.
It would never have occurred to a lawmaker after the population of Israel had settled down along
the whole tract of Palestine, all the way from Dan to Beersheba, to enact a provision that all the
male inhabitants had to forsake their homes and farms for days or weeks at a time no less than
three times a year, just to participate in religious rites at some central sanctuary. The only
sensible conclusion to draw is that Deuteronomy was drawn up when the Jewish remnant under
Zerubbabel and Jeshua had newly resettled the land. (At this point it would be appropriate to
suggest that if Deuteronomy does so clearly point to a time when the Hebrews had newly settled
the land and were still grouped closely together, these specifications admirably accord with the
time and setting the book of Deuteronomy gives for itself [1:1–4], that is, when Israel was all
assembled on the plains of Moab just prior to the conquest [ca. 1400 B.C.]. But Holscher does not
even discuss this possibility.)
With this conclusion of Holscher’s, Johannes Pedersen (cf. p. 105) was in general agreement. He
felt that the pervasive anti-Canaanite bias in Deuteronomy pointed to the antiforeign spirit which
prevailed in the age of Zerubbabel and Nehemiah. (But Pedersen likewise failed to consider the
possibility that such an anti-Canaanite spirit characterized the age of Moses and Joshua, when
the whole corrupt culture of the Canaanites lay under the condemnation of God.)
How shall we characterize the trend of twentieth-century scholarship in its treatment of
Pentateuchal criticism and of the Wellhausen hypothesis? At the very least it must be regarded as
a period of reaction against the neat, tight structure erected by the Documentary Theory of the
nineteenth century. Almost every supporting pillar has been shaken and shattered by a generation
of scholars who were brought up on the Graf-Wellhausen system and yet have found it
inadequate to explain the data of the Pentateuch. At the same time it must be recognized that for
the most part, even those scholars who have repudiated Wellhausen have shown no tendency to
embrace a more conservative view of the origin of the books of Moses. They have undermined
the defenses and torn down the bastions which buttressed the Documentary Hypothesis, but they
have gravitated quite definitely into an even more implausible position than that occupied by
their predecessors: despite the analogy of Israel’s pagan neighbors and contemporaries (who
embodied their religious beliefs in written scriptures long before Moses’ time), the Hebrews
never got around to inscripturating the records of their faith until 500 B.C. or later. It requires a
tremendous willingness to believe the unlikely for an investigator to come up with a conclusion
like that.
We close with an apt quotation from H. E Hahn, “This review of activity in the field of Old
Testament criticism during the last quarter-century has revealed a chaos of conflicting trends,
ending in contradictory results, which create an impression of ineffectiveness in this type of
research. The conclusion seems unavoidable that the higher criticism has long since passed the
age of constructive achievement.”
It is of great importance to biblical scholarship that students of higher criticism be accurately
informed as to the contribution and distinctive emphasis of each modern critic so that he
understands his presuppositions and his line of evidence and logic so as to be able to explain this
to an inquirer even though he doesn’t accept it as sound theology. It is important to have a
mastery of the contributions of Liberal or Negative Criticism in order to respond intelligently in
dealing with their errors. This facilitates effectiveness in discussion or confrontation with those
who have been trained in the school of Negative Criticism. Otherwise a defender of the historical
Christian position may be taken as imperfectly informed in his theological training and
scholarship. A good conservative scholar must be able to analyze accurately and fairly the
positions taken by Rationalist scholars before he can successfully refute them. Therefore, we
have prepared an excursus with a more detailed discussion of some of the more recent scholars
who carry on the tradition of the Documentary Hypothesis or Formgeschichte so we may be
well-informed as to what and why these scholars believe as they do. This enables the evangelical
student to understand the fallacies of those approaches when dealing with the data that bears
upon the subject at hand. In this way a student of conservative conviction may find himself on
much more advantageous footing than would be the case if he simply ignored and rejected
without serious refutation those liberal views and conclusions which he understands to be false.
See Excursus 3.

Keys to Identify Liberal Criticism

1. Employs circular reasoning

2. Textual evidence is devalued in favor of Hegelian dialectic

3. Assumes lower literary standard for Hebrew authors than contemporaries

4. Gives pagan documents prior credibility over Scripture

5. Assumes a purely human origin for Israel’s religion

6. Artificially concocted “discrepencies” are manipulated as proof text for biblical error

7. Espouses literary duplication or repetition as demonstrating diverse authorship

8. Claims “scientific reliability” for dating documents according to a theory of evolution

9. Assumes a superior knowledge of ancient history over original authors who lived 2000
 years plus closer to the events which they record

8
The Authorship of the Pentateuch
CHAPTERS 6 AND 7 have traced the development of the theories of Liberal scholarship as to the
authorship of the Pentateuch. Beginning with the triumph of deism in the 1790s and continuing
through the age of Hegelian dialecticism and Darwinian evolutionism in the nineteenth century,
the verdict has been against Mosaic authorship. The earliest written portions of the literary
hodgepodge known as the books of Moses did not antedate the ninth or eighth century B.C. In the
present century some concessions have been made by various scholars as to possible Mosaicity
of certain ancient strands of oral tradition, but so far as the written form is concerned, the
tendency has been to make the whole Pentateuch post-exilic. By and large, however, Mosaic
authorship has not even been a live option for twentieth-century Liberal scholarship; that battle
was fought and won back in the early 1800s, and it was principally the architects of the
Documentary Theory who deserved the credit for banishing Moses into the illiterate mists of oral
tradition. On the basis of the brief description of the rise of the Documentary Hypothesis given in
the two preceding chapters, we are in a position to indicate, at least in cursory fashion, the most
obvious weaknesses and fallacies which have vitiated the whole Wellhausian approach from its
very inception.

Weakness and Fallacies of the Wellhausian Theory

1. The Documentary Theory has been characterized by a subtle species of circular reasoning; it
tends to posit its conclusion (the Bible is no supernatural revelation) as its underlying premise
(there can be no such thing as supernatural revelation). That premise, of course, was an article of
faith with all Western intelligentsia back in the eighteenth century Enlightenment
(Encyclopedistes in France, die Aufklarung movement in Germany; it was implicit in the
prevailing philosophy of deism. Unfortunately, however, it rendered impossible any fair
consideration of the evidences presented by the Scripture of supernatural revelation.
Furthermore, it made it absolutely obligatory to find rationalistic, humanistic explanations of
every miraculous or God-manifesting feature or episode in the text of Scripture. But this attempt
to deal objectively with literary data from an antisupernaturalistic bias was foredoomed to
failure. It is like the attempt of persons who are color blind to judge the masterpieces of Turner
or Gainsborough. The first fallacy, then, was petitio principii (begging the question).
2. The Wellhausen theory was allegedly based upon the evidence of the text itself, and yet the
evidence of the text is consistently evaded whenever it happens to go counter to the theory. For
example, the Documentarians insisted, “The historical books of the Old Testament show no
recognition of the existence of P legislation or a written Mosaic code until after the exile.” When
in reply to this claim numerous references to the Mosaic law and P provisions were discovered in
the historical books, the reply was made, “Oh well, all those references were later insertions
made by priestly scribes who reworked these books after the exile.” This means that the same
body of evidence which is relied upon to prove the theory is rejected when it conflicts with the
theory. Or to put it in another way, whenever the theory is opposed by the very data it is
supposed to explain, the troubleshooting team of Redactor and Interpolator, Inc. is called to the
rescue. Elusive tactics like these hardly beget justifiable confidence in the soundness of the
result.
3. The Documentarians assume that Hebrew authors differ from any other writers known in the
history of literature in that they alone were incapable of using more than one name for God;
more than one style of writing, no matter what the difference in subject matter; or more than one
of several possible synonyms for a single idea; or even more than one theme-type or circle of
interest. According to these theorists (to use an illustration from English literature), a single
author like Milton could not possibly have written merry poems such as L’Allegro, lofty epic
poetry such as Paradise Lost, and scintillating prose essays such as Areopagitica. If he had been
an ancient Hebrew, at least, he would have been speedily carved up into the ABC multiple-
source hypothesis! The whole structure of source division has been erected upon exclusivist
assumptions demonstrable for the literature of no other nation or period.
4. Subjective bias was shown in the treatment of the Hebrew Scriptures as archaeological
evidence. All too frequently the tendency has been to regard any biblical statement as unreliable
and suspect, though the very antiquity of the Old Testament (even by the critics’ own dating)
should commend it for consideration as an archaeological document. In case of any discrepancy
with a pagan document, even one of a later age, the heathen source has been automatically given
the preference as a historical witness. Where there happens to be no corroborative evidence at
hand from non-Israelite sources or archaeological discoveries of some sort, the biblical statement
is not to be trusted unless it happens to fall in with the theory. It makes no difference how many
biblical notices, rejected as unhistorical by nineteenth-century pundits, have been confirmed by
later archaeological evidence (such as the historicity of Belshazzar, the Hittites, and the Horites),
the same attitude of skeptical prejudice toward the Bible has persisted, without any logical
justification. (It would be naive to suppose that pagan Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian
records—in contrast to the Hebrew Scriptures with their lofty ethical standards—were free from
propagandistic Tendenz or party bias.) It is to the credit of W. E Albright that much of his
scholarly endeavor was directed toward rehabilitating the reputation of the Old Testament as a
reliable record of the past. In numerous books and articles, he showed again and again that the
biblical record has been vindicated against its critics by recent archaeological discovery.
5. The Wellhausen school started with the pure assumption (which they have hardly bothered to
demonstrate) that Israel’s religion was of merely human origin like any other religion, and that it
was to be explained as a mere product of evolution. It made no difference to them that no other
religion known (apart from offshoots of the Hebrew faith) has ever eventuated in genuine
monotheism; the Israelites too must have begun with animism and crude polytheism just like all
the other ancient cultures. The overwhelming contrary evidence from Genesis to Malachi that the
Israelite religion was monotheistic from start to finish has been evaded in the interests of a
preconceived dogma—that there can be no such thing as a supernaturally revealed religion.
Therefore all the straightforward accounts in Genesis and the rest of the Torah relating the
experiences of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses have been subjected to a cynical re-analysis
intended to show that a monotheistic veneer has been applied to those old polytheistic worthies
by so-called Deuteronomists or the late priestly school.
6. Whenever by ingenious manipulation of the text a “discrepancy” can be made out by
interpreting a passage out of context, no reconciling explanation is to be accepted, but the
supposed discrepancy must be exploited to “prove” diversity of sources. (Cf. Pfeiffer’s imagined
discrepancy [IOT, p. 328] between the “two accounts” of the slaying of Sisera. Judges 5:25–27 is
alleged to represent Jael as having slain him with her hammer and tent peg while he was drinking
milk; Judg. 4:21 says she did it while he was asleep. Actually, 5:25–27 does not state that he was
drinking at the moment of impact; but it would be useless to point this out to Pfeiffer, for he has
already divided up the “discrepant accounts” between J and E.)
7. Although other ancient Semitic literatures show multiplied instances of repetition and
duplication by the same author in their narrative technique, Hebrew literature alone cannot show
any such repetitions or duplications without betraying diverse authorship. It is instructive to
study the sectarian literature from the Qumran caves and see how long the Israelites continued to
employ repetition for purposes of emphasis. For example, compare Plate I and Plate IV of the
Manual of Disciplines where the requirements for entering the monastic community are set forth
in such a way as to invite the attention of the Documentarian source divider. The same would be
true for Ugaritic epics such as Keret and Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. Compare the extensive
use of repetition in the chancery style of Daniel who wrote as a lawyer or civil servant who
employed the style of precise repetition found in statutory law today.
8. With highly questionable self-confidence, the Wellhausen school has assumed that modern
European critics, who have no other ancient Hebrew literature with which to compare (for the
biblical period, at least), can with scientific reliability fix the date of composition of each
document. They also assume that they can freely amend the text by substituting more common
words for the rare or unusual words preserved in the MT but which they do not understand or do
not expect in the given context. As foreigners living in an entirely different age and culture, they
have felt themselves competent to discard or reshuffle phrases or even entire verses whenever
their Occidental concepts of consistency or style have been offended.
9. They have also assumed that scholars living more than 3,400 years after the event can (largely
on the basis of philosophical theories) more reliably reconstruct the way things really happened
than could the ancient authors themselves (who were removed from the events in question by no
more than 600 or 1000 years, even by the critics’ own dating).
To sum up, it is very doubtful whether the Wellhausen hypothesis is entitled to the status of
scientific respectability. There is so much of special pleading, circular reasoning, questionable
deductions from unsubstantiated premises, that it is absolutely certain that its methodology
would never stand up in a court of law. Scarcely any of the laws of evidence respected in legal
proceedings are honored by the architects of this Documentary Theory. Any attorney who
attempted to interpret a will or statute or deed of conveyance in the bizarre and irresponsible
fashion of the Source Critics of the Pentateuch would find his case thrown out of court without
delay. Compare for example this statement by Judge William Dixon of Pasadena, California,
relative to a proposed constitution for a new church merger in the United Church of Christ: “It is
elementary that in the interpretation of a written contract all of the writing must be read together
and every part interpreted with reference to the whole, so that each provision therein will be
effective for its general purpose.” Surely this principle has a relevance even for the non-legal
portions of the works of Moses. Had it been followed in Pentateuchal analysis, the JEDP
hypothesis would have been an impossibility.

Positive Evidences of Mosaic Authorship

When all the data of the Pentateuchal text have been carefully considered, and all the evidence,
both internal and external, has been fairly weighed, the impression is all but irresistible that
Mosaic authorship is the one theory which best accords with the surviving historical data. For the
purposes of a convenient survey, and without elaborate demonstration or illustration at this point,
we shall list the various areas of evidence which point to this conclusion.

THE WITNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES TO MOSES’ AUTHORSHIP

1. The Pentateuch itself testifies to Moses as having composed it. We find these explicit
statements (ASV): Exodus 17:14: “And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a
book … that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek.” Exodus 24:4: “And Moses
wrote all the words of Jehovah”; and verse 7: “And he took the book of the covenant, and read in
the audience of the people.” Exodus 34:27: “And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these
words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.”
Numbers 33:1–2: “These are the journeys of the children of Israel.… And Moses wrote their
goings out according to their journeys.” Deuteronomy 31:9: “And Moses wrote this law, and
delivered it unto the priests”; and verse 11: “When all Israel is come to appear before Jehovah
thy God … thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing.” It is interesting to observe
that Wellhausen, in his Prolegomena, nowhere (according to the index to the English edition, at
least) discusses any of these five explicit references in the Torah to Moses’ writing of these
portions of the Pentateuch. Where passages are found that conflict with Wellhausen’s theory, he
simply passes them over in silence. Apparently he never even entertained the possibility of
Moses contributing a single word to the Pentateuch; certainly not the Ten Commandments nor
Moses’ fashioning of the brazen serpent in Num. 21:9 (Prolegomena, p. 439), which for
Wellhausen proved Moses was idolatrous.
2. In other Old Testament books we find such references as these: Joshua 1:8: “This book of the
law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon … that thou mayest
observe to do according to all that is written therein.” (In v. 7 this was described as “the law
which Moses my servant commanded thee.”) Joshua 8:31: “As it is written in the book of the law
of Moses, an altar of unhewn stones—” (i.e., Ex. 20:25). In verse 32: “And he [Joshua] wrote
there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses.” First Kings 2:3: “And keep the charge of
Jehovah … according to that which is written in the law of Moses” (David being the speaker
here). Second Kings 14:6 (referring to King Amaziah): “But the children of the murderers he put
not to death; according to that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, as Jehovah
commanded” (quoting Deut. 24:16). (The date of this episode was ca. 796 B.C.) Second Kings
21:8 (referring to the reign of Manasseh, 696–642 B.C.): “If only they will observe to do …
according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them.” Other references are found in
the Old Testament record from the time of Josiah onward (when, of course, Deuteronomy had
been published, and possibly also JE, according to the Wellhausen hypothesis). The authorship
of the Torah is always attributed personally to Moses. Such references are: Ezra 6:18; Neh. 13:1;
Dan. 9:11–13; Mal. 4:4.
3. The New Testament also strongly affirms Mosaic authorship. Apart from the numerous
references to the Torah as “Moses,” we select the following quotations which emphasize the
personality of the historical Moses. Matthew 19:8: “Moses for your hardness of heart suffered
you to put away your wives.” John 5:46–47: “For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for
he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” John 7:19:
“Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law?” Acts 3:22: “Moses indeed
said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you” (quoting from Deut. 18:15). Romans 10:5:
“For Moses writeth that the man that doeth the righteousness” (quoting Lev. 18:5). It is hard to
see how anyone can embrace the Documentary Theory (that Moses wrote not a word of the law)
without attributing either falsehood or error to Christ and the apostles. Mark 12:26 states that
God uttered to the historical Moses the words of Ex. 3:6.

OTHER INTERNAL EVIDENCES

But now we pass from the direct statements of Scripture itself concerning Mosaic authorship of
the Pentateuch to another line of evidence which is more indirect, but nonetheless almost as
compelling. The most objective method of dating the composition of any written document is to
examine its internal evidences. That is to say, by taking note of the incidental or casual allusions
to contemporary historical events, to current issues, geographical or climatic conditions, to the
prevalent flora and fauna, and to indications of eyewitness participation, it is possible to come to
a very accurate estimate of the place and date of composition. Judging therefore by the internal
evidences of the Pentateuchal text, we are driven to the conclusion that the author must have
been originally a resident of Egypt (not of Palestine), a contemporary eyewitness of the Exodus
and the wilderness wandering, and possessed of a very high degree of education, learning, and
literary skill. No one else conforms to these qualifications as closely as Moses the son of Amram.
We submit a brief summary of these evidences.
1. Eyewitness details appear in the account of the Exodus which suggest an actual participant in
the events, but which would be altogether beyond the ken of an author who lived centuries after
the event. For example, in Ex. 15:27 the narrator recalls the exact number of fountains (twelve)
and of palm trees (seventy) at Elim. Numbers 11:7–8 gives the appearance and taste of the
manna with which Jehovah fed Israel (no doubt for the benefit of coming generations in
conquered Canaan, where Moses knew no manna would fall).
2. The author of Genesis and Exodus shows a thorough acquaintance with Egypt, as one would
expect of a participant in the Exodus. He is familiar with Egyptian names, such as Ōn as the
native name (hieroglyphic ˒wnw) for Heliopolis; Pithom for Pt-;tm (“The House of Atum”—a
god); Potiphera’, for P;-d˒-p;-R˓ (“The Bowman of Ra’” or the “sun-god”); Asenath for Ns-N˒t
(“The Favorite of Neith”—a goddess), Joseph’s wife; Moses for Mw-s (“Water-son”), or
possibly a short form of Thutmose of Ahmose (since Egyptian subjects were often named after
the reigning Pharaoh); the special title of honor bestowed on Joseph by Pharaoh:
Zaphenathpa˓nēaḥ (Gen. 41:45), which probably represents the Egyptian df nt p ˓nḫ is the
way it would have been in hieroglyphic Egyptian—“Nourisher of the land of the Living One
[Pharaoh].” (This explanation by Sayce and Yahuda, similar to that of Lieblein, accounts
perfectly for all the Hebrew consonants: ṢPNTP˓NḤ. Furthermore, names compounded with this
same ḏf; are known to have been common in Joseph’s period. The interpretation favored by
Mallon, Steindorff, Barton, and Albright: ḏd p; nṯr˒ w∙f ˓nḫ—“The god speaks, he lives”—
involves major deviations from the Hebrew consonants and does not make as good sense in the
context of the situation.)
He also uses a greater percentage of Egyptian words than elsewhere in the Old Testament. For
examples: the expression ˒abrēk (Gen 41:43—translated, “bow the knee”) is apparently the
Egyptian ˒b rk (“O heart, bow down!”), although many other explanations have been offered for
this; weights and measures, such as zeret (“a span”) from drt—“hand”; ˒ephah (tenth of a homer)
from ˒pt; hɩ̄n (about five quarts volume) from hnw; gōme˒ (“papyrus”) from ḳmyt; qemaḥ
(“flour”) from ḳmḥw (a type of bread); šēš (“fine linen”) from sšr (“linen”); yeōr (“Nile, river”)
from ˒trw—“river” (which becomes eioor in Coptic).
One of the most ambitious modern works discussing the Egyptian background of the portion of
the Pentateuch which deals with Joseph and Moses in Egypt is Abraham S. Yahuda’s Language
of the Pentateuch in Its Relationship to Egyptian. Not confining himself to mere loanwords,
Yahuda discusses a large number of idioms and turns of speech which are characteristically
Egyptian in origin, even though translated into Hebrew. Thus in the strange expression of Gen.
41:40 which the KJV renders, “According unto thy word shall all my people be ruled,” but which
literally says, “According to thy utterance all my people shall kiss” (nāšaq, Hebrew)—Yahuda
finds a clarification in the Egyptian use of sn (“to kiss”) which is used before “food” to indicate
eating the food. The titles of the court officials, the polite language used in the interviews with
Pharaoh, and the like, are all shown to be true to Egyptian usage.
Another writer, Garrow Duncan, devotes several pages to a demonstration of the minute
accuracy and authentic local coloring of the author of the Torah. He remarks, “Thus we cannot
but admit that the writer of these two narratives [i.e., of Joseph and of the Exodus] … was
thoroughly well acquainted with the Egyptian language, customs, belief, court life, etiquette and
officialdom; and not only so, but the readers must have been just as familiar with things
Egyptian.”
Some eminent Egyptologists of Wellhausian persuasion have appealed to Egyptian evidence to
prove a late date for the Hebrew narrative. For example, Georg Steindorff (Aufenthalt Israels, p.
15) has argued that a more contemporary author would surely have known and mentioned the
names of these various Egyptian kings. But Yahuda furnishes a plausible explanation for the fact
that the Hebrew records do not mention the names of the Pharaohs until the time of Solomon and
thereafter. While the Israelites resided in Egypt, they simply followed the usual custom of New
Kingdom Egyptian official language by referring to the king simply as pr-˓; (“Pharaoh,—Great
House”) while refraining from mentioning his personal name in proximity to that particular title
(however often they may have mentioned it in connection with other royal titles). Hence instead
of being an evidence of lateness, this conformity to Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian usage turns out
to be strong evidence of an authentic Mosaic date of composition.
On the other hand, it should be noted that in the later period, for example in the tenth century, the
name of the king of Egypt is given in the Old Testament without the title of Pharaoh preceding
it—still conforming to Egyptian usage. An example is the reference to Shishak (Sheshonq, in
Egyptian) in 1 Kings 11:40. Not until the late seventh century and early sixth century does the
Hebrew historiographer depart from correct Egyptian usage enough to append to the title
Pharaoh the actual name of the king (e.g., Pharaoh-Neco in 2 Kings 23:29 and Pharaoh-Hophra
in Jer. 44:30).
3. The author of the Torah shows a consistently foreign or extra-Palestinian viewpoint so far as
Canaan is concerned. The seasons and the weather referred to in the narrative are Egyptian, not
Palestinian. (Cf. the reference to crop sequence in connection with the plague of hail, Ex. 9:31–
32. Delitzsch states that this information pinpointed the incident as occurring late in January or
early in February.)
The flora and fauna referred to are Egyptian or Sinaitic, never distinctively Palestinian. Thus, the
shittim or acacia tree is indigenous to Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, but not to Palestine (except
on the lower shore of the Dead Sea); it is a distinctive desert tree. Out of this material the wood
for the tabernacle furniture was to be made. The skins to be used as the outer covering of the
tabernacle were to be skins (Ex. 25:5; 36:19), the taḥash being a dugong which is found in seas
adjacent to Egypt and Sinai but foreign to Palestine. The lists of clean and unclean birds and
animals contained in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14 include some which are peculiar to Sinai (such as the
pygarg or dishōn of Deut. 14:5 and the ostrich of Lev. 11:16), but none of which are peculiar to
Canaan. The wild ox or antelope (te˒ō, Hebrew) of Deut. 14:5 is a native of Upper Egypt and
Arabia but not of Palestine. (Yet it has been reported in Syria, according to The Westminster
Dictionary of the Bible, p. 30a.) In this connection the coney, hyrax, or rock badger (shāphān,
Hebrew) of Lev. 11:5 has often been cited as peculiar to Sinai and Arabia. This is, however,
disputed by H. B. Tristram, who claims to have found them as far north as North Galilee and
Phoenicia. In all these specific instances, of course, it should be remembered that the distribution
of animals tends to become restricted in the course of time. Thus, lions were fairly abundant in
the Near East in ancient times, but are in the present day restricted to India and Africa (although
a few lions have been spotted in the Palestinian Ghor). Bears were also dangerous predators in
O.T. times (cf. 1 Sam. 17:34; 2 Kings 2:24; Amos 5:19).
Both Egypt and Sinai are very familiar to the author from the standpoint of geography. The
narrative of the Exodus route is filled with authentic local references which have been verified
by modern archaeology. But the geography of Palestine is comparatively unknown except by
patriarchal tradition (in the Genesis narratives). Even in Gen. 13, when the author wishes to
convey to his audience some notion of the lush verdure of the Jordan plain, he compares it to
“the land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar” (v. 10), referring to a locality near Mendes, midway
between Busiris and Tanis in the Delta. (Cf. Budge, Egyptian Dictionary, 2:1058, which refers to
it as a fortress in the Delta, a district near Mendes.) Obviously the audience for which Genesis
was written knew what it was like in Egypt but were unfamiliar with the appearance of the
Jordan Valley. Similar is the reference to Shalem (ASV marg.), “a city of Shechem, which is in
the land of Canaan” (Gen. 33:18)—a type of reference impossible to explain if the writer had
lived in a post-exilic generation, after Israel had already been settled in the land of Canaan for
nine centuries or more with Shechem as one of the most prominent cities north of Jerusalem.
After Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, what Hebrew reader would have to be told that Shechem was
in the land of Canaan? In general, the author of the Pentateuch seems to regard Palestine as a
new, comparatively unknown territory into which the Israelites are going to enter at a future
time.
4. The atmosphere of Exodus through Numbers is unmistakably that of the desert, not of an
agricultural people settled in their ancestral possessions for nearly a thousand years (as
Wellhausen supposed). The tremendous emphasis upon a tabemacle or large tent as the place of
worship is altogether out of place for authors living centuries after the cedar-timbered temple of
Solomon had been built (a temple which differed from the appointments of the tabernacle in
several important details). But it would be altogether relevant for a nomadic people constantly on
the march through the desert. The materials of which it was to be made are most carefully
specified over a large number of chapters. Its central location in the midst of the encampment
and the exact location of the twelve tribes on the four sides of it (Num. 2:1–31) have a perfect
appropriateness to the generation of Moses, but none whatsoever to any later generation. The
references to the desert crop up everywhere. For example, the scapegoat is to be sent off into the
desert (Lev. 16:10). Sanitary instructions are given for desert life (Deut. 23:12–13). The exact
order of march is specified in Num. 10:14–20 in a way that would have significance only while
the entire population of Israel was concentrated into one large group and was in a process of
migration.
5. Particularly in the book of Genesis there are references to archaic customs which are
demonstrable for the second millennium B.C., but which did not continue during the first
millennium. Notably in the legal documents discovered at Nuzi and dating from the fifteenth
century, we discover references to the custom of begetting legitimate children by handmaidens
(as Abraham did with Hagar); to the validity of an oral, deathbed will (like Isaac’s to Jacob); to
the importance of the possession of the family teraphim for the claiming of inheritance rights
(which gives point to Rachel’s theft of Laban’s teraphim in Gen. 31). From other sources comes
confirmation of the historical accuracy of the transaction in Gen. 23 whereby Abraham
purchased the cave of Machpelah.
6. There are significant archaisms in language, as well. For example, the word for the pronoun
“she” is frequently spelled HW˒ instead of the regular HY˒. There are only three occurences of
this spelling h-w , for ḥ-y-˒ in the rest of the O.T. (1 Kings 17:15, Isa. 30:31, Job 31:11). We
also meet with N˓R instead of the feminine form N˓RH for “young girl.” Occasionally (i.e., twice
in Genesis) HLZH (hallāzeh) appears for the demonstrative “that” instead of hallaz, the form
used in Judges, Samuel, and thereafter. The verb for “laugh” is spelled ṢḤQ (in Genesis and
Exodus) instead of ŚḤQ; “lamb” is KŚB instead of the later KBŚ (kebeś). By some scholars it has
been argued that there is too little difference between the Hebrew of the Torah and that of eighth-
century authors like Amos, to allow for the passage of over five centuries. Two factors must be
bome in mind here.
First, the possible changes in pronunciation and form are greatly obscured by the unvoweled,
consonantal alphabet in which the Old Testament was preserved until Masoretic times. After all
even Old English would not look so very different from Elizabethan English if both were written
in consonants only! Second, the central importance of the Torah in the education of post-Mosaic
youth must have exerted as decisive an influence upon the Hebrew they used as the Qur’an has
had upon thirteen centuries of literary Arabic (which even today is still the same language
essentially as that of Muhammed in A.D. 620). In both cases the ancient document was taken as a
unique divine revelation and an all-comprehensive constitution upon which the entire culture was
built. Such a situation makes for extreme conservatism in the development of the literary
language.
As for the objection that the Mosiac period was too early for the use of the definite article ha-
(since other Semitic languages did not develop a word for “the” as early as that), this is easily
explained from Israel’s exposure to Egyptian influence. It was precisely during the Eighteenth
Dynasty in Egypt that the definite article (p;, t;, n;) began to make its appearance even in literary
texts, although sporadic occurrences appear even in Twelfth Dynasty texts such as the Eloquent
Peasant. Undoubtedly this reflected the customary usage in colloquial Egyptian during the age of
Moses, and the Hebrews could hardly fail to have felt the need for a similar article in their own
language. It is therefore not surprising to find full-fledged use of the article in the prose sections
of the Torah (although the poetic passages used it very sparingly indeed—as was true of later
Hebrew poetry).
All these features (1–6) are easily reconcilable with Mosaic authorship; they are virtually
impossible to harmonize with the Wellhausen theory of stage-by-stage composition from the
ninth to the fifth centuries. The laws of evidence would seem to demand a rejection of the
Documentary Hypothesis as clearly inadequate to account for the actual data of the Pentateuchal
text.
7. There is a most remarkable unity of arrangement which underlies the entire Pentateuch and
links it together into a progressive whole, even though successive stages in revelation (during
Moses’ writing career of four decades) result in a certain amount of overlapping and restatement.
By implication even the Documentarians are forced to concede this unity by resorting to a
hypothetical redactor to explain the orderliness and harmony of arrangement evident in the final
form of the Torah as it has come down to us.

MOSES’ QUALIFICATIONS
From all that has been recorded concerning Moses himself, it is evident that he had every
qualification to be the author of just such a work as the Pentateuch. He had the education and
background for authorship, since he received from his ancestors that wealth of oral law which
originated from the Mesopotamian cultures back in the time of Abraham (hence the remarkable
resemblances to the eighteenth century Code of Hammurabi), and from his tutors in the Egyptian
court he received training in those branches of learning in which Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt
excelled the rest of the ancient world. From his forebears he would naturally have received an
accurate oral tradition of the career of the patriarchs and those revelations which God had
vouchsafed to them. He would have a personal knowledge of the climate, agriculture, and
geography of Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula such as the author of the Pentateuch so patently
displays. He would have had every incentive to compose this monumental work, since he was
the founding father of the commonwealth of Israel, and it was upon these moral and religious
foundations that his nation was to fulfill its destiny. He certainly had plenty of time and leisure
during the slow, tiresome forty years of wandering in the Sinai desert to compose a book several
times the size of the Torah. Moreover, he had just come from a culture in which the art of writing
was so widely cultivated that even the toilet articles employed by the women in the household
contained an appropriate inscription. Writing in both hieroglyphic and hieratic characters was so
widely prevalent in the Egypt of Moses’ day that it seems absolutely incredible that he would
have committed none of his records to writing (as even the twentieth-century critics contend),
when he had the grandest and most significant matters to record which are to be found in all of
human literature. At a time when even the unschooled Semitic slaves employed at the Egyptian
turquoise mines in Serabit el-Khadim were incising their records on the walls of their tunnels, it
is quite unreasonable to suppose that a leader of Moses’ background and education was too
illiterate to commit a single word to writing. Thus it turns out that the modern theories which
reject Mosaic authorship put more of a strain upon human credulity than can reasonably be
borne.
 9
Variations and Doublets as Criteria for Source
Division

The Variation between Yahweh and Elohim

AS WE HAVE ALREADY SEEN in our review of the history of the Documentary Hypothesis
(chap. 6), the basic criterion for source division followed by the pioneers of this critical school
was the occurrence of “Jehovah” (Yahweh) and “God” (Elohim) as favorite or preferred names
for God in Genesis. The argument was that the prevalence of Elohim in Gen. 1 marked it as
originating from an author (E or P) who referred to God only by that term, and never employed
any other title than this. Correspondingly the preponderance of Yahweh in Gen. 2 marked it as
coming from a different author (J), who knew God only as Yahweh. It is necessary for us to
examine the credibility of this diverse Source Theory as an adequate explanation for the
distribution of these divine titles in Genesis and the rest of the Torah.
From the standpoint of comparative religions, it is doubtful whether the religious literature of
any of Israel’s pagan neighbors ever referred to a paramount god by a single name. In Babylonia,
the Sumerian counterparts were alternated with the Akkadian names: Bel was also Enlil and
Nunamnir (Prologue of Lipit-Ishtar Code); Anum was Ilum, Sin was Nanna, Ea was Enki, Utu
was Shamash, and Ishtar was Inanna or Telitum (cf. Prologue to Hammurabi’s Code). At Ugarit,
Baal was also called Aliyan, El was Latpan, and Kothar-wa-Khasis (“the artificer god”) was
Hayyin (cf. Aqhat, ANET, p. 151). In Egypt, Osiris (the judge of the dead and lord of the
netherworld) was also Wennefer, Neb-Abdu, and Khentamentiu (cf. the Ikhernofret Stela in the
Berlin Museum); his son Horus was also Re-Harakhti, and so on throughout the Egyptian
pantheon. In Greece, the king-god Zeus was known also as Kronion and Olympios, Athena was
Pallas, Apollo was Phoebus and Pythius—titles which appear in parallelism in Homer’s epics
without requiring any theory of diverse sources. At the time of Astruc and Eichhorn, of course,
the Semitic and Egyptian data were virtually unknown; otherwise it is impossible that any theory
of source division based on divine names could ever have arisen. But now that these facts are
well known in the twentieth century, it is hard to see how anyone can take seriously the terms
Yahwist or Elohist any longer. In connection with the Ebla tablets (BA 5/76, p. 48), Pettinato
points out that previous to the reign of King Ebrium (ca. 2330 B.C.), we meet names like Mi-ka-il
and En-na-il. From his time on, they appear as Mi-ka-ya and En-na-ya. He remarks, “This amply
demonstrates that at Ebla at least ‘Ya’ had the same value as ‘Il’ and points to a specific deity.”
(C. Wilson, Secrets of a Forgotten City, p. 111.)
A most impressive parallel to the irregular distribution of the two divine names in the Torah is
furnished by the sacred scriptures of the Muslims, the Koran. No one can question the unity of
authorship of the Koran, and yet we meet with a similar phenomenon in this Arabic text. The
name Allahu corresponds to Elōhɩ̂ m, and Rabbu (“lord”) is equivalent to the Adonay (Lord)
which the later Jews used in referring to Yahweh. In some suras (chapters) of the Koran, we find
the two terms intermingled, but in others only the one or the other appears. For example, in the
following suras the name Rabbu never occurs: 4, 9, 24, 33, 48, 49, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 86,
88, 95, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 109, 111, 112. On the other hand, the following suras never use
the name Allahu: 15, 32, 54, 55, 56, 68, 75, 78, 83, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94, 99, 100, 105, 106, 108,
113, 114. Here we have indisputable evidence that ancient Semitic literature was capable of
selective use of divine names even though composed by the same author.
One remarkable feature of the Wellhausian source division is the occasional appearance of the
wrong name in the “Jehovistic” and “Elohistic” portions of the Pentateuch. Early in the
development of this multiple-document theory, an effort was made to bolster the case for
diversity of authorship by drawing up lists of near synonyms which were supposed to occur only
in the one “source” or the other. (For example, of the two words for “female slave,” šiphḥâ was
assigned exclusively to J and ˒āmah to E, in Gen. 33, Driver assigned the passage to J because of
its use of šipḥâ, even though Elōhɩ̂ m appears throughout. Likewise the name Sinai was assigned
to J and P, the name Horeb was reserved for E and D.)
Despite the effort to keep these “characteristic words” and their appropriate divine names in their
separate watertight compartments, occasional leaks have occurred, so to speak. Thus we discover
that Elohim occurs in such passages as Gen. 3:1–5 (where the serpent thus refers to God); Gen.
16:13 (where Hagar calls the name of Jehovah: “Thou art an El that sees”); Gen. 32:28–29 Jacob
at Peniel is said to have striven with Elohim—a very anthropomorphic motif—and received the
name Yisra-El, or Israel). On the other hand, Yahweh occurs in such E passages as Gen. 22:11
(where the angel of Jehovah restrains Abraham from plunging the knife into Isaac) and verse 14
(where Abraham calls the place “Jehovah-jireh”); Gen. 28:17–22 (where Jacob makes a vow,
saying, “Jehovah will be my God”). Yahweh also occurs in such passages as Gen. 7:16; 14:22;
and 17:1. Despite all the vigilance of the Source Critics with their scissors and paste, a few slips
like these have occurred, even though the general practice was to slice a verse in two where the
compound name Yahweh-Elohim occurs (e.g., Gen. 2:4; where 4a is assigned to P and 4b to J),
rather than allow the “wrong” name to appear and thus embarrass the theory. (Yahweh-Elohim
occurs eleven times in Gen. 2: Yahweh never stands alone!)
It has already been pointed out that serious objection was raised against using the names as a
criterion for source division on the ground of the numerous discrepancies which occur between
the name appearing in the MT and that employed in the corresponding LXX translation. This
threw doubt upon the soundness of any process of separation which depended so completely
upon the infallibility of the MT in the transmission of Yahweh and Elohim, when inaccuracy was
charged against it by those same critics in practically all the rest of the Torah. The actual data of
the Hebrew documents themselves do not well sustain the old Astruc theory that a different name
necessarily indicates a different author.
What explanation does account for the distribution of Yahweh and Elohim throughout the
Torah? A careful study of the etymology and usage of the two names indicates that the name
chosen depended upon the context of the situation. Elohim (which is apparently derived from a
root meaning “powerful, strong, or foremost”) is used to refer to God as the Almighty Creator of
the universe and Lord over nature and mankind in general. Hence only Elohim is appropriate in
Gen. 1, since the subject dealt with there is creation. Yahweh, on the other hand, is the covenant
name of God, which is reserved for situations in which some covenant engagement of God is
involved. Thus in Gen. 2 this name is very frequently used, because the subject matter is God’s
gracious dealing with Adam and Eve under the covenant of works. In Gen. 3 it is the serpent, as
the agent or embodiment of Satan, who stands in no covenant relationship with God, and hence
refers to Him as Elohim—an example which Eve also follows as long as she is talking with the
serpent. But it is Jehovah God who calls out to Adam (3:9) and reproves Eve (3:13), and who
also, as covenant-keeping God of the repentant couple, lays a curse upon the serpent (3:14).
This distinction between the two names of God was clearly perceived and defined by Rabbi
Jehuda Hallevi as long ago as the twelfth century A.D., when he defined Elohim as the divine
name in general, whereas Adonay (or Yahweh) specified the God of revelation and covenant.
Even Kuenen felt constrained to concede: “The original distinction between Jahweh and Elohim
very often accounts for the use of one of these appellations in preference to the other.” A little
later he comments: “The history of critical investigation has shown that far too much weight has
often been laid on agreement in the use of the divine names.… It is well, therefore, to utter a
warning against laying an exaggerated stress on this one phenomenon. An admission like this
would seem to indicate qualms as to the validity of the most fundamental of all the criteria for
source division, even on the part of a principal architect of the Documentary Hypothesis.
Although the Documentarians belong to a school of thought that scornfully rejects any attempt to
establish Christian doctrines by proof texts, they have occasionally become stalwart champions
of the proof text method themselves; that is, insisting on a literal interpretation of the words of a
single verse or two quite irrespective of context or of the analogy of scriptural teaching
elsewhere. In no instance is this more striking than in their treatment of Exodus 6:2–3: “I am
Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as El Shaddai; but by my
name Yahweh I was not known (lônôda˓tɩ̂ ) to them.” This is pressed to mean that according to
this author (E), the name Jehovah was first revealed to Moses. (J, however, did not know about
this later tradition and mistakenly assumed that Jehovah was appropriate for the pre-Mosaic
narrative as well.) But this in point of fact involves a very superficial analysis of the Hebrew
verb to know (yāda˓) and of the implications in Hebrew of knowing a person’s name. That it
could not be meant in a baldly literal sense is shown by the absurdity of supposing that the entire
ten plagues were necessary to convince the Egyptians (Ex. 14:4: “And the Egyptians shall know
that I am Jehovah”) that the God of the Hebrews was named Yahweh. Obviously both in Ex. 6:7,
“Ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God, who bringeth you out from under the burdens of the
Egyptians,” and in 14:4 the implication is that they shall witness God’s covenant faithfulness in
delivering His people and destroying or punishing their foes. They will thus come to know Him
by experience as Jehovah, the covenant God. The expression “to know that I am Jehovah” occurs
at least twenty-six times in the Old Testament, and in every instance it conveys this same idea.
Hebrew usage therefore indicates clearly enough that Ex. 6:3 teaches that God, who in earlier
generations had revealed Himself as El Shaddai (God Almighty) by deeds of power and mercy,
would now in Moses’ generation reveal Himself as the covenant-keeping Jehovah by His
marvelous deliverance of the whole nation of Israel. As Orr points out, the “name” (shēm,
Hebrew) denotes the revelation side of God’s being.
It is quite significant that in recent years even some of the leading Liberal scholars in Europe
have surrendered the traditional Wellhausian exegesis of Exodus 6:3. Thus Ivan Engnell says,
“The different divine names have different ideological associations and therewith different
import. Thus, Yahweh is readily used when it is a question of Israel’s national God, indicated as
such over against foreign gods, and where the history of the patriarchs is concerned, while on the
other hand Elohim, ‘God,’ gives more expression to a ‘theological’ and abstract-cosmic picture
of God in larger and more moving contexts.… So then, it is the traditionist, the same traditionist,
who varies in the use of the divine names, not the ‘documents’.” So also Sigmund Mowinckel:
“It is not E’s view that Yahweh is here revealing a hitherto unknown name to Moses. Yahweh is
not telling his name to one who does not know it. Moses asks for some ‘control’ evidence that
his countrymen may know, when he returns to them, that it is really the God of their fathers that
has sent him … the whole conversation presupposes that the Israelites knew the name already.”

Other Variations in Diction and Style

It has already been suggested that from the earliest days of the Documentary Hypothesis, in the
time of Astruc and Eichhorn, an effort was made to bolster the theory of separate sources by
drawing up lists of distinctive words which were alleged to have been used only by J or E, as the
case might be, and not only by the other source. Examples have been given earlier in this
chapter; for instance, the synonyms for “female slave” (šippḥâ and ˒āmâ, assigned to J and E
respectively) and the variant geographical terms Horeb (E or D) and Sinai (J or P). Yet these lists
seem to have been made out by very dubious, question-begging methods which tend to vitiate the
whole procedure. These methods are as follows.
1. The various types of subject matter have been strictly segregated and parceled out to the
various “sources” on a compartmentalized basis. Thus, vivid biographical narrative has all been
assigned to J, etiological legends are usually attributed to E, and statistics or genealogical lists or
ritual prescriptions to P. Naturally each type of subject matter tends toward a specialized
vocabulary, and this would account for the preference for certain words or idioms in one genre as
over against another. The style and vocabulary employed in a newspaper editorial are apt to
differ quite markedly from those of a sports write-up, even though the same author may have
composed them both. One could draw up similar lists of specialized terms appearing in Milton’s
essay Areopagitica as over against his tractate on divorce; yet they were both by the same author.
2. In selecting characteristic words for each list, the critics have been forced to resort to
interpolations in order to explain the occurrence of a P word in a J passage, or a J word in an E
passage. It is necessary, for example, to assign to P all of the occurrences of “and Aaron” in Ex.
8, even the J passages such as verses 1–4 and 8–15. This is because of the critical dogma that
Aaron was an unhistorical personage not invented until the time of the composition of the
Priestly Code. Similarly, when Padan-aram (a P name) occurs in Gen. 31:18 (an E section) the
second half of verse 18 is awarded to P, leaving the rest of verses 4–45 to E (thus salvaging the
dictum that Padan-aram occurs only in P, as over against the name Aram-naharaim, which is
employed by J, E and D). But this is just a question-begging procedure. The initial contention
was that the Hebrew text itself could only be accounted for by diverse sources using specialized
vocabulary; but wherever the Hebrew text embarrasses the theory by coming up with the
“wrong” word, that offending word must straightway be dealt with as an interpolation from
another “source.” By such methods as these, it would be possible to take any literary
composition ever written and divide it up into diverse sources, explaining away all inconvenient
discrepancies as mere interpolations.
The Documentarians have also assumed without proof that ancient Hebrew authors were
incapable of variety in their modes of expression; variety in the biblical text can only be
explained by diversity of authorship. Yet it is well known that in the literature of other nations,
the accomplished writer was very apt to employ variety of phrase in order to avoid monotony.
This is particularly apparent in parallelistic poetry, such as Gen. 30:23–24: “And she conceived,
and bore a son: and said, ‘Elohim has taken away my reproach’; and she called his name Joseph
(yôsēph), saying, ‘May Jehovah add (yôsēph) to me another son.’ ” While this statement of
Rachel’s is not poetry in the technical sense, it partakes of the parallelistic flavor of poetic style.
It is obvious from the wordplay—yôsēph, yôsēph—that this verse is a single unit. Yet because of
the artificial criterion followed by Wellhausians, they feel constrained to parcel out the first
clause to E and the second to J.
A similar example is in Gen. 21:1–2: (a) “And Jehovah visited Sarah as He had said,” (b) and
“Jehovah did to Sarah as He had spoken.” (c) “And Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son in
his old age,” (d) “at the set time of which Elohim had spoken to him.” Under the constraint of
their theory, the critics have assigned (a) and (c) to J, and (b) and (d) to P. Yet the fact that even
(b) contains Jehovah occasions them considerable embarrassment, since a P passage prior to
Exodus 6:3 should read “Elohim.” (The LXX here reads Kyrios, or the equivalent of Jehovah, in
all three instances!)
It should also be recognized that variety may be used by a single author for the sake of emphasis
or vividness. For example, in the Exodus account of Pharaoh’s refusal to release the Israelite
population, three different verbs are used to refer to his obstinacy in the face of the ten plagues:
ḥāzaq (“become strong or bold”) or ḥizzēq (“to make strong or bold”), hiqšâ (“make hard”), and
hiḵbɩ̂ d (“make heavy or insensible”). The critics assign the first to P and E, the second to P alone,
and the third to J. But actually these are used with a fine discrimination by the Hebrew author to
describe the progressive hardening of the king’s heart, first as a result of his own willful refusal,
and then as a result of God’s judicial blinding of His stubborn foe. Thus in Ex. 7:13 (a P verse),
we read that Pharaoh’s heart “became bold” (ḥāzaq); the next verse, 14, quotes Jehovah as
remarking on the new condition of Pharaoh’s heart as being “heavy” or “stubborn” (kāḇēd),
which is a very natural sequence psychologically. This alternation between ḥāzaq and hiḵbɩ̂ d
(Pharaoh’s voluntary response and God’s judicial hardening of his heart) continues throughout
the narrative (Ex. 7–9) according to a deliberate plan on the part of the author. Critics have
completely overlooked this in their artificial parceling up between P and J.
In other cases the variety of phrasing may be employed to emphasize or amplify some statement
of particular importance. Thus, in the death notices of women such as Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse
(Gen. 35:8), or Rachel (35:19), it is described in simple terms: “She died and was buried.” But in
the case of the patriarchs, such as Abraham (Gen. 25:8), Isaac (35:29), and Jacob (49:33), the
formula is more solemn and elaborate: “He gave up the ghost (gāwa˒) and died, and was
gathered to his people, and his sons buried him.” Yet the Documentarians, ignoring this obvious
distinction, assign the obituaries of the women to E and the patriarchal obituaries to P, after a
mechanical and artificial type of dissection. On the other hand, they leave many other passages
undisturbed, even though they show precisely similar variety in the wording; for example, verses
like Ex. 1:7: “And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied,
and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them”—all of which is assigned to P;
or chapters like Gen. 24, with its four different designations of Rebekah (damsel, woman, virgin,
and maiden)—all assigned to J (cf. Allis, FBM, pp. 63–64).
The critics have always regarded the longer form of the pronoun “I” (˒ānōkɩ̄) as earlier in usage
than the shorter form (anɩ̂ ), and therefore a criterion for Source Division. Hence the formula “I
am Jehovah” (˒ānōkɩ̄ Yahweh) in Ex. 20:2, 5 is assigned to JE, and its occurrence in Deut. 5:6, 9
would presumably be a repetition from this earlier (J-E) tradition. Actually, however, the choice
between anɩ̂ and ˒ānōkɩ̄ is partly governed by convention or cliché; the usual phrasing for ‘I am
Jehovah’ is anɩ̂ Yahweh, and it occurs also in J (Gen. 28:13; Ex. 7:17), even in contexts that
freely employ ˒ānōkɩ̄ for “I.” The argument of the critics based on the high preponderance of anɩ̂
in an exilic author like Ezekiel overlooks the fact that sixty of its occurrences in Ezekiel (as well
as nearly fifty in P) consist in this same stereotyped expression, anɩ̂ Yahweh (cf. Allis, FBM, p.
65). But the whole argument has more recently been rendered ridiculous by the discovery of both
forms of the first person singular pronoun almost side by side in the fifteenth-century Ugaritic
inscriptions. This is a striking instance of how untrustworthy are the lines of argument used to
buttress the Documentary Theory. Post-Wellhausian archaeological discovery overthrows the
“assured results” of Wellhausian scholarship and demonstrates the unreliability of deductions
based upon ignorance.

Supposed Doublets and Parallel Accounts

From the earliest days of the Documentary Theory, a principal line of argument resorted to for
proving the existence of Diverse Sources in the Pentateuch has been the asserted existence of
doublets and parallel accounts. The two creation accounts, the differing strands in the flood
narrative, the three namings of Isaac, and the like, have assertedly resulted from a clumsy
combination of diverse traditions of the same event. Some later editor or redactor has allegedly
gathered these all together in such a way as to leave many of the discrepancies still in the text,
making possible a scientific disassembling of the parts by a discerning critic. This type of
analytic dissection has its principal appeal to those who are already committed to the theory of
multiple authorship. Those who come to the text with an open mind fail to note any such
divergences as they read it through.
1. In the case of the supposed pair of creation accounts, Gen. 1 stemming from P in exilic or
post-exilic times, and Gen. 2 from J in the ninth century, it should be observed that Gen. 2 does
not even purport to be an account of the creation of the world. It has only to do with the creation
of Adam and the environment (Eden) in which he was set. Many scholars feel that Gen. 2:4:
“These are the generations (tôled̂t) of the heavens and of the earth in the day that Yahweh Elohim
made earth and heaven,” constitutes the heading of the section which ensues (even though the
two names for God compel source critics to parcel the verse up between J and P). But tôled̂t
nowhere else expresses the idea of creation. In the nine other occurrences of this formula (“these
are the generations”) found in the Torah, it always introduces an ensuing account of the offspring
of an ancestor through the successive generations descended from him. It may therefore well be
that we have in Gen. 2 an account of the offspring of heaven and earth (in this case, principally
Adam and Eve) after the initial creation has already taken place. (Conceivably in this instance,
however, it may refer back to Gen. 1).
There is, however, an element of recapitulation involved here, for the creation of the human race
is related all over again (cf. Gen. 2:7 and 1:26–27). But actually this technique of recapitulation
was widely practiced in ancient Semitic literature. The author would first introduce his account
with a short statement summarizing the whole transaction, and then he would follow it up with a
more detailed and circumstantial account when dealing with matters of special importance. To
the author of Gen. 1–2, the human race was obviously the crowning, or climactic, product of
creation, and it was only to be expected that he would devote a more extensive treatment to
Adam after he had placed him in his historical setting (the sixth creative day). It is a mistake to
suppose that Gen. 2 indicates the creation of the animal order as taking place after the origin of
man. It only states that the particular individuals brought before Adam for naming had been
especially fashioned by God for this purpose. (It does not imply that there were no animals
anywhere else in the world prior to this time). Or else, as Aalders suggests (SIP, p. 44), the word
formed yāṣaph (in Gen. 2:19) can equally well be translated “had formed” (since the Hebrew
perfect tense does double duty for both past tense and past perfect). This would mean that God
brought before Adam every beast and fowl which He had previously formed out of the earth.
Lastly, the obvious fact should be noted that no genuine creation account even in pagan
religions, would ever omit mention of the creation of the sun, moon, stars, earth, and seas, as
Gen. 2 does. Such omissions eliminate all possibility of this chapter’s being properly classified
as a real cosmogony, in the light of ancient Near Eastern comparative literature.
Kenneth Kitchen observes in this connection,

It is often claimed that Genesis 1 and 2 contain two different creation narratives. In point of fact,
however, the strictly complementary nature of the ‘two’ accounts is plain enough: Genesis 1
mentions the creation of man as the last of a series, and without any details, whereas in Genesis 2
man is the centre of interest and more specific details are given about him and his setting. There
is no incompatible duplication here at all. Failure to recognize the complementary nature of the
subject-distinction between a skeleton outline of all creation on the one hand, and the
concentration in detail on man and his immediate environment on the other, borders on
obscurantism.
He then goes on to cite the varied styles in ancient Near Eastern monumental texts which could
not have had any textual prehistory, such as the Karnak Poetical Stela in honor of Thutmose III,
the Gebel Barkal Stela, and various royal inscriptions from Urartu, which show a pattern of
general praise of the prowess of the ruler, followed by a detailed account of specific victories. He
concludes by observing:
What is absurd when applied to monumental Near Eastern texts that had no prehistory of hands
and redactors should not be imposed on Gen. 1 and 2, as is done by uncritical perpetuation of a
nineteenth-century systematization of speculations by eighteenth-century dilettantes lacking, as
they did, all knowledge of the forms and usages of Ancient Oriental literature.

2. As to the diverse flood narratives (Gen. 6–8 being parceled out between J and P), it should be
observed that the unbiased reader is unable to detect any diverse elements in these three chapters
as they stand in the MT, and that divergences are made possible only by an artificial process of
dissection. It is only an unproved assumption to insist, as Wellhausen did, that the general
command to take two of every species into the ark (P) is incompatible with the exceptional
provision to take seven pairs of every “clean” species (J). To the ordinary reader, the basis for
the distinction is plain enough, and by no means involves irreconcilable viewpoints. The same
thing is true concerning the number of days during which the flood lasted. It is contended that J
makes out the flood to be forty days in length (Gen. 7:12, 17; 8:6—plus two more weeks for the
sending out of the dove), where P makes it 150 days (Gen. 7:24). But a consecutive reading of
the whole narrative makes it apparent that the author put the length of the downpour itself at
forty days, whereas the prevalence of the water level above the highest portions of the land
surface endured for 150 days (for 7:24 does not say that it rained during that entire period).
Allis points out (FBM, pp. 95–97) that only in the three major points of emphasis in the flood
narrative is it possible to make out “parallel accounts,” namely: the sinfulness of man as the
cause of the flood; the destruction of all flesh as the purpose of the flood; the rescuing of a
representative remnant of man and beast from the destruction of the flood. These three elements
are stressed by the characteristic Hebrew device of restatement in slightly different terms after
suitable intervals in between. But outside these three elements it is almost impossible to make
out parallel accounts which do not depend upon each other for missing details. For example,
according to the critical analysis, J makes reference to the ark without any explanation as to its
construction. Only P records the entering of Noah and his family into the ark (Gen. 7:13–16a),
except that J states Jehovah shut them in the ark (even though the author of J apparently does not
state how they got in there). Only J knows about the sending forth of the birds for reconnoitering
purposes (8:6–12); P says nothing about it.
It is fair to say, therefore, that the actual data of the text are easily reconcilable with unity of
authorship, but furnish serious obstacles to division into two divergent sources. It is also
peculiar, if the Genesis flood narrative is made up of two strata separated by nearly four
centuries in origin, that the Babylonian account of the flood (found in the Gilgamesh Epic)
includes both J elements and P elements in its version of the episode. Thus, it speaks of the
measurements of the ark (a P element), and of the sending forth of the birds (a detail from J), and
of the offering up of a sacrifice of thanksgiving after the flood was over (likewise from J). The
Babylonian parallels make the conclusion almost unavoidable that both the J portion and the P
portion of Gen. 6–8 are of equal antiquity, and go back ultimately to the same oral tradition as
did the Utnapishtim episode in the Gilgamesh Epic. The Babylonian account in turn shows
noteworthy dependence upon a centuries-older Sumerian account.
Other alleged doublets in Genesis may be discussed more briefly. There are said to be three
accounts of the naming of Isaac (Gen. 17:17—P; 18:12—J; and 21:6—E). But there is no
particular reason why both Abraham and Sarah should not have laughed with incredulity, as each
in turn heard the prediction of his birth, and then at last laughed with joy.
4. As for the two accounts of Joseph’s abduction to Egypt—the J account that the Ishmaelites
bought him (Gen. 37:25), and the E account that the Midianites took him (37:28)—this duality of
names simply points to a fact well known to the author’s contemporaries, that the Midianites
were accounted a subtribe of the Ishmaelites. In Judg. 8:24 we read concerning the kings of
Midian, Zebah, and Zalmunna, and their followers: “For they had golden earrings, because they
were Ishmaelites.” Originally, to be sure, Midian was descended from Abraham by Keturah
(Gen. 25:2), but the Ishmaelite tribes and Keturah tribes seem to have become interrelated in
north Arabia because of their common descent from Abraham.
5. The two episodes where Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister, before Pharaoh (Gen. 12:10–
20), and before Abimelech of Gerar (Gen. 20:1–18), are alleged to be variant forms of the same
original legend. But the supposition that men never make the same mistake twice, or yield to the
same temptation more than once, is, to say the least, naive, especially when we consider the fact
that Abraham came out financially better off on both occasions.
6. As for the episode in Gen. 26:6–11 where Isaac resorted to the same subterfuge in regard to
his wife Rebekah, and did so moreover at Gerar at a time when an Abimelech was king of the
Philistines, it is to be conceded that there are remarkable points of resemblance with the E
account in Gen. 20 (where Abraham and Sarah are involved). But before we resort to the
Wellhausian explanation of a garbled version of the same tradition (Gen. 26 being attributed to
J), we must satisfy ourselves on these three points: first, that sons never repeat the bad example
of their parents; second, that the inhabitants of Gerar must necessarily have improved their
sexual morals by the time Isaac settled among them; third, that Philistine dynasties never handed
on the same name from ruler to ruler (i.e., Abimelech I, Abimelech II, etc.), even though this was
demonstrably the practice in Egypt (whose Dyn. XII showed such a series as Amenemhat I, II,
and III, and also Senwosret I, II, and III) and in Phoenicia (where a succession of Hirams or
Ahirams ruled at Tyre and Byblos). It ought to be pointed out, incidentally, that both the
Egyptian adventure of Abraham in Gen. 12 (where he denied that Sarah was his wife) and the
Gerar episode of Isaac (Gen. 26) are attributed to J by the Documentarians. Here, then, is an
instance where a doublet does not indicate necessarily a difference in source. The same is true of
Jacob’s second visit to Bethel (when he reaffirms the name Bethel a second time); E records this
second visit (Gen. 35:1–8) as distinct from the first (Gen. 28:18–22). Here again is a “parallel
account” which is conceded even by the critics to stem from the same source.
7. There are two accounts of the flight of Hagar from Abraham’s home. The one in Gen. 16:4–14
is attributed to J (relating how she fled before Ishmael was born) and the E account, Gen. 21:9–
21, relates how she fled again when Ishmael was already a young lad. But considering the
tensions existing between Sarah and Hagar over the years, was it not reasonable for two such
incidents to occur at different times and under dissimilar circumstances? Does not history
abound in such repeated episodes in the lives of other important personages, such as Bishop
Athanasius and his three banishments (in A.D. 335, 339, and 356)? (Would not the same type of
divisive literary criticism have to parcel out these three banishments to three different “sources”
whose several traditions have later been combined by a redactor?)
8. As for the two namings of the well at Beersheba, the first time under Abraham in Gen. 21:31
(attributed to E), and the second time under Isaac in Gen. 26:33 (attributed to J), there is no
compelling necessity for regarding these as variant traditions of the same original episode.
Considering the nomadic habits of Abraham and his immediate descendants, it is altogether
likely that the hostile inhabitants of the locality would have stopped up the well after the Hebrew
sheikh had moved away. Upon Isaac’s return to the old familiar rangeland would it not be quite
natural for him to open the well again and piously revive the old name which his father had given
to it? Would it not be expedient for him also to confirm his right to the well by a renewed treaty
(confirmed by a shiḇ˓â, “oath”) with the current ruler of the land? (Here it should be observed
that the word shiḇ˓â is but the feminine form of the word sheba˒ in the name Beersheba; they
both mean “oath.”)

Hebrew Style One Answer to Doublets

Part of the answer to the theory of doublets may be found in the nature of Hebrew literary style.
O. T. Allis has pointed out that there are three traits of Hebrew style which are well known to
have been practiced by individual Hebrew authors but which can easily be exploited by modern
division-minded critics for dissection into hypothetical “sources.” These three traits are
paratactic sentence structure, repetition of elements of major importance, and poetic parallelism.”
A few words of explanation are appropriate at this point.
1. Paratactic sentence structure refers to the characteristic technique of Hebrew rhetoric by which
subordinate or interdependent ideas are linked together by the simple connective and (w˓-,
Hebrew). For example, in Gen. 1:14, where the idea expressed in an Indo-European language
would employ a purpose clause, “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven in order to serve
as signs and seasons,” the Hebrew author says: “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven
… and they shall be for signs, and seasons.” Or again, Isa. 6:7 literally reads, “Lo, this has
touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is being atoned for.” But what
Isaiah meant to convey here was, “Lo, this has touched thy lips in order that thine iniquity may
be removed and thy sin be atoned for.” This same Hebrew particle (we) and may be used to
convey the temporal idea of “when,” or the circumstantial idea of “while,” or the consequential
idea of “then,” or the epexegetic idea of “even” or “that is to say.” The versatility of we- is
universally conceded by Hebrew grammarians. But a dissection-minded critic may easily carve
up these component elements of a Mosaic sentence on the supposition that fragments of diverse
sources have been clumsily glued together by a later redactor who simply used an and to link
them together. If a Hebrew author had written his material in classical Greek, for example, or in
Latin, much of this divisive analysis of the Wellhausian school would have been well-nigh
impossible, for in those languages subordinate conjunctions or participles are customarily
employed to express the same ideas as Hebrew expresses in paratactic form.
2. The second trait is the tendency to repeat in slightly varied form those elements of the
narrative which are of especial importance. One example of this technique has already been
given in connection with the flood narrative. It was there pointed out how the repetition of the
three major points of emphasis has furnished divisionists with their only convenient material for
dissection, whereas the rest of the account shows no evidence whatsoever of multiple sources.
Somewhat similar is the series of chapters recounting the ten plagues (Ex. 7–11). In some cases a
plague is fully described in five characteristic parts: threat, command, execution, supplication for
removal, and cessation. For Source Critics it is a perfectly simple matter (although purely
artificial) to parcel these out among hypothetical authors. Thus the threat and cessation are given
to J, while the command and execution are assigned to P. But in the case of the less grievous
plagues, the description is briefer and they have to be distributed more or less intact to one
source. Hence the plagues of lice and of boils are assigned to P without anything left over for J or
E. By this arbitrary arrangement, J knows only of seven plagues, P comes up with only five, and
E with only four (plus a fifth which is only threatened but never carried out). Consequently no
two of these sources agree as to the number or nature of the plagues, and each of them needs the
information contained in the others in order to complete the series of ten.
3. A third characteristic of Hebrew style which lends itself to artificial source division is poetic
parallelism. Parallelism is the term given to the balanced structure of paired clauses which is
employed so extensively in Hebrew verse, such as Ps. 24:1: “The earth is Jehovah’s and the
fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” As can be seen from this example,
corresponding synonyms are employed in the two members of the parallelism: “earth”
corresponds to “world,” and “fullness” corresponds to “they that dwell therein.”
Careful examination of the alleged doublets and parallel accounts—so stressed by Kuenen and
Wellhausen as criteria for source division—tends to show that these phenomena are capable of a
far more natural and unforced explanation of the basis of single authorship than is possible on the
theory of multiple sources. The JEDP hypothesis does not really square with all the evidence,
and it treats much of its allegedly supporting data in a way that would never be admissible in a
court of law. Moreover, the methodology of this type of literary criticism is all the more suspect
because it proves to be so facile an instrument for dividing up even compositions which are
universally acknowledged to be of single authorship.
Green gave an excellent illustration on this in his “documentarian” analysis of the parable of the
prodigal son in Luke 15. In this parody of Wellhausen’s technique, he points out that source A
and source B agree that there were two sons, one of whom received a portion of his father’s
property, and was subsequently reduced to penury through his own extravagance. But only A
distinguishes the sons as elder and younger; B makes no mention of their relative ages. In A the
younger obtained his share of the inheritance by solicitation, while his father retained the rest for
himself; according to B the father divided up the inheritance between the two sons on his own
initiative. A states that the prodigal remained in his father’s neighborhood and reduced himself to
penury by riotous living; in B he went to a distant country and spent all his property, but did not
indulge in any unseemly excesses. Green carries this through exactly in the manner of S. R.
Driver, complete with characteristic A words and B words which have been inserted in the
wrong place by a bungling redactor. Green then proceeds to do the same thing with the parable
of the good Samaritan. Being thoroughly versed in the methodology of the Wellhausian school
he handles his material as if he were an accredited member of the guild, and thus demonstrates
its artificiality.

10
Late Words and Aramaisms as Criteria for
Source Division

Introduction: Late Words and Aramaisms

ONE OF THE MOST IMPOSING CRITERIA resorted to by divisive criticism, in demonstrating

the lateness of certain portions of the Pentateuch, consists in listing words occurring in the text
which are seldom used otherwise in extant Hebrew literature, except in the post-Christian
writings of the Talmud and Midrash. This method gives a most plausible impression of scientific
objectivity and carries great weight with those who have heard only one side of the story. There
is another side, however, which must also be considered by the thoughtful observer, and which
robs this argument of much of its force. Briefly stated, the argument runs as follows: If a word
occurring less than three or four times in the Old Testament recurs only in later Hebrew literature
(the Talmud and Midrash), then the word is of late origin, and the Old Testament passage must
be of late composition. Employing this criterion it has been possible for critics to bolster their
contention that the Priestly Code (P) is of exilic or post-exilic origin, and also to separate large
portions of Isaiah and other post-Mosaic books as later insertions from the Persian period or even
from the Greek.
During the second decade of the twentieth century, Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton took the
trouble to make an exhaustive tabulation of all the so-called rare words in the Hebrew Scriptures,
and he later published the resultant statistics. Surprisingly enough, it turned out that such rare
words occur in every book of the Old Testament and in almost every chapter. If this criterion is
trustworthy, then all the books of the Old Testament are late and none are early. Compare the
following figures, bearing in mind that the higher the percentage of “rare words” which recur in
the same sense in the Talmud, the later in composition the Old Testament book must be—if this
criterion is valid. The number of rare words (i.e., words occurring five times or less) is given in
one column and the percentage of these appearing in the Talmud in the next column.

RARE WORDS

Critics Dates Occurances Talmud

Document P 550–450 B.C. 192 53.1 %

Document D 621 B.C. 154 53.2 %

Document H 570–550 B.C. 48 50.0 %

Document E 750 B.C. 119 48.7 %

Document J 850 B.C. 162 44.4 %

Jeremiah 620–580 B.C. 278 32.1 %

Isaiah 1–39 740–680 B.C. 121 22.3 %

Isaiah 40–66 550–300 B.C. 62 25.8%

Daniel 168 B.C. 47 29.8 %

From these statistics it is apparent that the latest of all, the book of Daniel (according to higher
critical dating), has the third lowest percentage of the nine cited (i.e., 29.8 percent), and that J
(the earliest of them all) has a far higher percentage of rare words recurring in the Talmud, i.e.,
44.4 percent. Document E, allegedly earlier by two or three centuries than P, scores less than 5
percent below P; whereas D (supposedly more than a century earlier than P) totals up to just
about the same percentage as P. From these figures it becomes apparent that the whole approach
is unsound and the argument invalid. Post-exilic Ezra 1–6 comes up with only 16.7 percent, even
though it is dated 450–370 B.C. by critics; Malachi (430 B.C.) also ranks low, with 23.1 percent—
as over against the 850 B.C. “Jehovist” with its 44.4 percent. We must therefore abandon this
type of investigation altogether, for it leads only to absurd results.
Why are these “rare words” so inconclusive as a time indicator? Principally because of the
insufficiency of the data. We today possess in the Bible only a tiny fraction of all the literary
output of the ancient Hebrews. There are a good three thousand words in the Old Testament
which occur less than six times; fifteen hundred of them occur but once (hapax legomena). But
this by no means indicates that they were uncommon in all other levels of Hebrew
communication apart from the Bible itself. Mere fortuity may account for their infrequency in
the Scriptures, just as some very common English words happen to occur only once in the
English Bible, such as “invasion” (1 Sam. 30:14), “jumping” (Nah. 3:2) and “lance” (Jer. 50:42).
Every new discovery of ancient Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions brings to light words which
had hitherto been known only from documents centuries later in origin. D. W. Thomas of
Cambridge refers “to the re-emergence in late literature of words which themselves are very
ancient, and which may or may not be, through pure accident, attested in earlier documents.”
Hebrew itself offers many interesting examples of this. If, for example, we had only Ben Sira
(Ecclesiasticus), should we not be tempted to argue that the word ˒swḥ (“reservoir”) in 50:3, not
occurring elsewhere in Hebrew, is a late word? Yet it is to be found on the Moabite Stone (11:9,
23)! Since the ninth century B.C. this old Semitic word lay hid until it turned up again seven
hundred years later in Ben Sira.” Here we may add that it occurs no less than four times in the
copper scroll of Qumran Cave 3 dated the first century A.D.

Aramaisms as a Criterion for Lateness

The architects of the Documentary Hypothesis assumed that the presence of an Aramaic word in
a biblical text was an indication of post-exilic origin. It was not until the Babylonian captivity
that the Jews began to abandon their ancestral Hebrew and adopt the more widely spoken
Aramaic language, which was used in commerce and international correspondence throughout a
large portion of the Persian empire from the Tigris to the Nile. By Ezra’s time (according to Neh.
8:8), the Hebrew Torah required interpreters for the congregation to understand its import, and
very likely this explanation was given in Aramaic, which was now the household speech of the
Jewish populace. Prior to the Exile, however, only the well-educated nobility and civil servants
understood Aramaic, as we may gather from the incident in 701 B.C. when the Assyrian
Rabshakeh was urged to keep his remarks in Aramaic, lest the Jewish soldiers nearby might
understand his Hebrew (2 Kings 18:26). Consequently it is unthinkable, argued the
Wellhausians, that any authentic pre-exilic Hebrew would have contained Aramaisms.
But this assumption of the preservation of Hebrew and Aramaic in watertight compartments
prior to the captivity has been quite discredited by more recent archaeological discoveries. For
instance, the inscription of King Zakir of Hamath composed about 820 B.C. (Lidzbarski’s
Ephemeris fur Semitische Epigraphik 3:3) shows a most remarkable admixture of Canaanite (or
Hebrew) in its Aramaic text. For example, it uses the Hebrew ˒š for “man” rather than the usual
Aramaic ˒nš; it employs the Hebrew ns˒ for “lift up” rather than the Aramaic nṭl. Likewise also
the Panammu Inscription from the first half of the eighth century, composed in the north Syrian
principality of Ya’udi, shows the same intrusion of Hebrew or Canaanite forms; for example, ˒nk
instead of ˒n for “I,” ntn instead of yhb for “give,” šm instead of tm˒ for “there,” and yšb instead
of ytb for “sit, dwell.”
It should be noted that these Hebraisms in Aramaic cannot be accounted for as peculiarities of
Jewish Aramaic, since these inscriptions were composed by non-Jews in regions fairly remote
from Palestine. That this intermingling of Canaanite and Aramaic was of very early origin is
indicated by the Ugaritic literature of fifteenth century Ras Shamrah. Ugaritic was a dialect of
West Semitic closely related to Hebrew, and yet as early as the time of Moses we find such an
intrusion of Aramaisms as to give some scholars grounds for arguing that Ugaritic was basically
an Aramaic dialect which had absorbed many Canaanisms.
The Genesis record makes it clear that Aramaic influences were at work in Hebrew from its
earliest stages. After his long sojourn in Aramaic-speaking Haran, Abraham and all his
household must have been very fluent in that language before they migrated to Canaan and
gradually adopted the tongue of its inhabitants. Isaac’s bride, Rebekah, came to him from
Aramaic-speaking Padan-aram; likewise both of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel. When Jacob’s
uncle Laban overtook him at Gilead, we are told in Gen. 31:47 that Laban called the witness
cairn Yegar-śāhedūtā (“the heap of witness”), whereas Jacob called it by the same thing in
Canaanite: Gal˓ēd (“Gilead”). In the period between the Conquest and the reign of Saul (1400–
1010 B.C.) the contacts with Aramaic-speaking peoples were doubtless minimal, but with the
extension of Hebrew power under David and Solomon to the borders of Hamath and the west
bank of the Euphrates, there must have been a rich exchange of cultural influences and linguistic
contacts with Aramaic speaking Damascus, Hadrach, Zobah, and Hamath. These would have
been particularly noticeable in the dialect of the northern Hebrew tribes contiguous to these
Syrian principalities. During the United Monarchy, there would very naturally have been a
broadening of Hebrew vocabulary to include Aramaic and North Israelite terms or grammatical
traits, particularly in the language of poetry. Hence the comparative frequency of Aramaisms in
some of the later Davidic psalms and in Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon.
These considerations furnish a good basis for concluding, first, that the presence of an Aramaism
is no decisive evidence for assigning a post-exilic date to a biblical document in which it occurs;
second, that the literary genre makes a difference as to the frequency with which Aramaisms may
occur in a given text. Of course if in narrative prose there is a consistent and sustained Aramaic
influence at work, extending even to idioms and grammatical formations, then it may be validly
deduced that the Hebrew author was equally at home in Aramaic. Yet such a situation is
demonstrable only in books which purport to be exilic or post-exilic, such as the Hebrew section
of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and (to a certain extent) in Esther. (Interestingly enough, no such
Aramaic influence is demonstrable for post-exilic prophets, such as Haggai, Zechariah, and
Malachi. For some reason they adhered to a relatively pure Hebrew diction, despite the
prevalence of Aramaic in their day. They were probably so steeped in the language of the Torah
that they were consciously biased in favor of Mosaic purity as they spoke in the name of the
Lord.)
On the other hand, it should be emphasized that Documentarian critics have tended to exaggerate
the Aramaic elements discoverable in the Hebrew Scriptures. A great number of Hebrew words
which they have classified as Aramaisms turn out, on closer examination, to have a very good
claim to the status of authentic Hebrew words, or else to be derivable from Phoenician,
Babylonian, or Arabic dialects, rather than from Aramaic. For example, many critics have
carelessly assumed that Hebrew nouns ending in -ôn are necessarily Aramaic because the -ān
ending is so common in Aramaic. Yet the fact of the matter is that this ending is also found with
fair frequency in Babylonian and Arabic, and further proof is necessary to demonstrate that it
could not have been native in Hebrew from Canaanite times; and that it was derivable only from
Aramaic and not from Babylonian (Akkadian) or Arabic. Of the sixty-three nouns ending in -ôn
or -ān in the Pentateuch (and which are therefore asserted to be Aramaic) the Aramaic Targum of
Onkelos renders only twelve by the same nouns ending in -n; it renders the remaining fifty-one
by other nouns entirely (and most of them without any ending in -n). At the same time, in the
entire Targum of the Torah, Onkelos exhibits only sixty-three nouns in -n, whereas the Hebrew
original itself has the same number, sixty-three. This seems to be rather tenuous evidence for the
proposition that -n is indigenous only to Aramaic and necessarily an Aramaism in Hebrew! (Cf.
Wilson, SIOT, pp. 147–48.)
In Kautszch’s Die Aramäismen im Alten Testament he listed about 350 words in the Hebrew Old
Testament as being certainly, probably, or possibly of Aramaic origin. Concerning these 350
words, R. D. Wilson reports that 100 of them have never (as of 1926) been found in any Aramaic
document, and of the remaining 250, a good 135 have never been found in an Aramaic document
earlier than the second century A.D. Of the remaining 115 which have been found in documents
from before that time, 75 are found in Babylonian, Arabic, Phoenician, or Ethiopic (as well as in
Hebrew and Aramaic)—which leaves the question open as to who borrowed from whom (or
were they all derived from the same parent Semitic language?). (Cf. SIOT, pp. 155, 156.) Wilson
goes on to point out that 50 out of Kautszch’s 350 “Aramaic” words are found in the Pentateuch;
but of these 50 words, only 24 are employed by Onkelos in his Aramaic Targum of the Torah. It
would be natural to expect that authentic Aramaic words would be eagerly embraced for the
translation into Aramaic, but it turns out that less than half of them were. To be sure, some of
these so-called Aramaic words might have become obsolete by the time of Onkelos, but a 54
percent loss is well beyond the normal rate of vocabulary change in the course of six centuries or
so. Moreover, the roots of 16 out of these 24 words in Onkelos occur also in Babylonian or
Arabic.
Considerable doubt must therefore attach to the great majority of these 350 “Aramaisms” listed
by Kautszch. In most cases these words occur in Hebrew books older by seven centuries than
their earliest occurrence in extant Aramaic documents. To be sure there is a regrettable paucity of
Aramaic materials from the pre-Christian centuries, but the classification of Hebrew words as
Aramaisms ought to be established upon more solid grounds than mere scholarly conjecture.
When we remember that critics have on the basis of Aramaisms assigned about 1500 verses of
pre-exilic literature to a post-exilic date, it is reasonable to demand written documentation to
verify the Aramaic status of these words. To be sure, there are some linguistic tests by which a
genuine Aramaism can be distinguished in Hebrew, even apart from such documentation. That is
to say, if the word in question contains one of seven telltale consonants, and if that same root
exists in other Semitic languages, it is usually possible to tell whether a word is authentically
Aramaic and borrowed by the Hebrew author as a loanword.
The significant consonants are listed below in Arabic (which usually preserves the most
primitive Semitic pronunciation), Hebrew, and Aramaic, with a sample word to illustrate each
shift. The meaning of the word is given at the commencement of the row. (Ḏ represents the
sound of th in this; š is sh in she; ṯ is th in thing; ẓ is a deepthroated z sound which is close to a th
in this; ṣ is an intense s that is close to a ts in quality; ṭ is a deep-throated t sound made slightly
back of the position of ordinary t; d is a deep-throated sound resembling d followed by voiced th
in a -dth combination; ˓ is a sort of grunt or snarl which is made deep in the throat as the throat
muscles are tightened up; ḥ is a deep-throated kh sound like ch in Loch Lomond.)

COMPARISON OF PRONUNCIATIONS

Arabic Hebrew Aramaic

(1) “to sacrifice” ḏabaḥạ zābaḥ̣ debaḥ̣

(2) “to break” ṯhabara šābar tebar

(3) “to look at, guard” naẓara

̣ nāṣạ r ̣
neṭar

(4) “land, country” ˓ardun ˒ereṣ ̣ ˒ara˓

From this simplified chart it is apparent how a Hebrew word containing one of these four
significant consonants can be detected as an Aramaic borrowing. Thus if a word which ought to
show a z turns up with a d instead (1), or instead of a šit appears with a t (2), or instead of a ṣit
shows a ṭ or ˓ (3) (4), then it may be borrowed from Aramaic. Wilson (SIOT, p. 142) calculates
that there are eighteen roots in biblical Hebrew which also occur both in Arabic and Aramaic
with consonant shift (1), eighteen with consonant shift (2), nine with (3), and eleven with (4).
Yet of all these fifty-six instances, Wilson finds only five which pass the consonant-shift test for
an Aramaism: nādar “to vow,” ˒ātar “to abound,” ṭillēl “to cover” (Neh. 3:15), berōt “fir tree”
(Song 1:17), and medibat “causing to flow” (Lev. 26:16)—athough Wilson argues that even this
word really comes from a root dā˒ab “to be weak” (and therefore it would not come under
consonant shift #1). Only four or five roots may easily be accounted for on the grounds of
intercultural relations, and there is no need to resort to post-exilic dating for the four which occur
in pre-exilic books.
We close this discussion with this brief quotation from M. H. Segal’s Grammar of Mishnaic
Hebrew, “It has been the fashion among writers on the subject to brand as an Aramaism any
infrequent Hebrew word which happens to be found more or less frequently in Aramaic dialects.
Most of these Aramaisms are as native in Hebrew as they are in Aramaic. Many of them are also
found in other Semitic languages.” Note also that Norman Snaith found only three or four of the
alleged forty-one Aramaisms in Job to be demonstrably genuine Aramaisms which are absent
from earlier books of the Hebrew Bible. He states, “We hold that if a root is found elsewhere
than in Aramaic, and if the transformation rules concerning the consonants are observed, then the
word is not an Aramaism. It is, we maintain, a rare word which has been retained in the memory
of the literary writers, those who were wise men in Israel, those who had pretensions to culture
and who were aware of the literature of the other countries of the Fertile Crescent.”
 11
Wellhausen’s Reconstruction of Hebrew History
in the Preprophetic and Prophetic Period

Introduction: Wellhausen’s Reconstruction (Preprophetic and Prophetic

Period)

IN ORDER TO SUPPLEMENT the rather brief indications of chapter 6 as to the reinterpretation

of Hebrew religious history developed by the Documentarians in the nineteenth century, it will
be appropriate here to examine it in somewhat greater detail and to analyze its weaknesses. This
discussion will be divided into two chapters for convenience’ sake; the treatment of the Priestly
Period will be deferred until chapter 12.
It will be recalled that the Wellhausen school regarded the 850 B.C. J and 750 B.C. E as the
earliest written portions of the Pentateuch. These represented the earlier phase of the prophetic
period (apart from the oral prophets who went back to Samuel’s time). From the time of the
Judges, of Moses, and of the patriarchs, we have, according to this theory, only garbled traditions
handed down by word of mouth over a period of many centuries, and which were finally
committed to writing in J and E. How were these oral traditions to be sifted scientifically so as to
separate the original fact from legendary or slanted accretions? The Documentarians found a
ready method for this in the methodology of Hegelian philosophy and Darwinian evolutionism
which were then at the very height of fashion in philosophical circles.
As A. Noordtzy of Utrecht pointed out in “The Old Testament Problem,” the nineteenth century
was dominated by an anthropocentric viewpoint. Man came to be regarded as an end in himself,
and God existed only as a means to be used for man’s benefit. The idea of evolution had
captured the thinking of that day, and was thought to furnish the best key to the understanding of
history as well as of nature. Religion was discussed only from the standpoint of its subjective
benefits to man. All possibility of special revelation from a personal God was discounted, and
the religious side of man was to be explained by a natural process of development as a mere
expression of his cultural activity. Since a study of comparative religions showed a consistent
pattern of progress, as they thought, from primitive animism or fetishism to polydemonism, then
to polytheism, monolatry, and finally monotheism, they concluded that Israel’s religion must
have developed along similar lines. The present form of the Hebrew text of the Torah does not
testify to anything but a monotheistic viewpoint, but this is to be explained as the reworking of
the ancient traditions by the priestly school of the post-exilic period, who imposed their fully
evolved monotheistic viewpoint upon them. Even J and E belonged to an age dominated by the
monotheism of the eighth-century prophets (notably Amos in the vanguard of these), and the
original animism and polytheism of the patriarchs were thus veneered over to conform to the
later theology. But a keen-scented practitioner of comparative religions could nevertheless ferret
out some of the traces of the more primitive belief by sloughing off all the monotheistic
accretions. Proceeding upon the assumption that Israel’s religion must have been of natural
origin, not supernatural, these nineteenth-century analysts (such as E. B. Taylor, Schultze, and
W. Robertson Smith) exploited every slightest detail in the ancient record which might be
reinterpreted to indicate a submonotheistic faith.
Much dependence was laid upon the supposed analogy of the development of the religion of
non-Israelite nations in the ancient Near East. In Egypt, for example, by a process of syncretism
(explaining a group of similar gods as only manifestations or phases of the one basic god) the
Egyptians ascended from the exuberant polytheism of an earlier age to a higher stage very close
to monolatry by the Eighteenth Dynasty, when Amon-Re’ was exalted as the supreme deity of
whom all lesser gods were but secondary phases. This in turn paved the way for the quasi-
monotheism of King Akhnaton (1387–1366 B.C.), which represented the high point in Egyptian
religion. In Babylon we find a supposedly similar development in the elevation of the god
Marduk to supremacy, subsuming all other deities under him. In Greece the colorful polytheism
of Homer gave way in later centuries to the monotheistic philosophies of Xenophanes and Plato
(who so often referred to ho theos, “the god”). Progress toward monotheism, then, was simply
part of a general evolutionary process through which Israel must have passed, like any other
ancient nation.
The fact remains, however, that the actual data of comparative religions render this argument
from analogy altogether untenable. It is an incontestable fact of history that no other nation (apart
from those influenced by the Hebrew faith) ever did develop a true monotheistic religion which
commanded the general allegiance of its people. Isolated figures may be pointed out like
Akhnaton and Xenophanes (both of whom also spoke of “gods” in the plural number), but it
remains incontrovertible that neither the Egyptians nor the Babylonians nor the Greeks ever
embraced a monotheistic faith on a national basis. Right down to the days of Christ and the
apostles, the inhabitants of those lands and of all other nations of which we have any knowledge
were firmly committed to a belief in many gods and goddesses, composing a pantheon of
celestial government. They believed in sky-gods, water-gods, tree-gods, earth-gods, and all the
rest, just about as their forefathers had thousands of years before. While the philosophic schools
may have reduced the gods to one impersonal essence (such as the Stoics), or denied the
existence of God altogether (such as the Epicureans), or simply occupied the middle ground of
agnosticism, the great masses of their countrymen still clung to a belief in the ancestral deities,
along with an assortment of foreign gods (including those which were imported from Egypt and
Asia) to give their religion a dash of exotic color.
This is the verdict of history: only Israel appeared with a monotheistic religion on a national
basis. This is a fact that demands a reasonable explanation in face of the utter contrast which the
Hebrew nation presented to all its ancient neighbors. It does not reduce the difficulty to
hypothecate a polytheistic origin for Israel’s religion, for this only accentuates the problem of
explaining how in Israel—and only in Israel—polytheism gave way to monotheism. (Since both
the Christian faith and the Islamic religion developed directly from Hebrew monotheism, they
furnish no exception to the uniqueness of Israel’s religion.) So far as this writer is aware, there is
no other reasonable explanation of this fact except that which is given by the Old Testament
itself, that Israel derived this monotheistic faith by direct revelation from God. It was no product
of the natural Hebrew “genius for religion” (as is often asserted), for the Scripture record
witnesses rather to the natural Hebrew genius for irreligion and apostasy. It attests the readiness
of the ancient Israelites to adopt the polytheism of their heathen neighbors and forsake their
covenant relationship with Jehovah. At least until the time of the Exile (587 B.C.), the Hebrew
Scriptures themselves affirm that the ten northern tribes first, and then the two tribes of the
Southern Kingdom, were constantly straying off into the worship of degenerate foreign deities
and attempting to break away from God’s revealed Word. The fact that they did not permanently
fall away is uniformly represented as being due to the hindering power of God’s grace and of His
continued message to them through the prophets.

The Preprophetic Period According to Wellhausen

Following the guiding principles of comparative religions, it was possible for the architects of
the Documentary Hypothesis to “discover” traces of lower religion in the faith of primitive
Israel. Animism, for example, shimmers through the account of Jacob’s sleeping on a stone
pillow at Bethel (Gen. 28:18); of course this stone was actually a cult object, somewhat like the
sacred Black Stone of the Kaabah in Mecca. Stone worship must also lie behind the account of
the cairn erected by Jacob and Laban in Gilead (Gen. 31:47). Did not the idolatrous Canaanites
set up a stone pillar beside their altars on the high places, in the belief that the local Baal would
reside in that stone, and sally forth to feast upon their sacrifices? The fact that idolatrous
Israelites followed the same practice when they took over the high places from the Canaanites
testifies to their adherence to stone worship even in the last stages of the Divided Monarchy.
As for tree worship, even the idealized figure of Abraham, if he ever really existed (and some
critics, like Noldeke, were prepared to question this), had faith in sacred trees. Witness the
reference to his sojourning by the “terebinth of Moreh” in Gen. 12:6. (Mōreh in this case would
signify teacher, from hōrah, to “teach,” because the devout could hear the tree speak to them by
the rustling of its leaves—just like the oaks of Zeus at Dodona.) Later on we find him setting up
his headquarters by the “oaks of Mamre” in Gen. 14:13; he must have worshiped these trees also.
In post-Mosaic times we have the significant instance of the prophetess Deborah, who made her
headquarters by a sacred palm tree (Judg. 4:5). Other traces of animism are found in the
legislation attributed to Moses. For example, Ex. 20:25 provides that any altar erected to Yahweh
must be made of unhewn stone. Why unhewn? To avoid the possibility of engraving cult
symbols on the altar (as we might naturally infer after a command against graven images), or
was it to obviate offending the daemon who was superstitiously supposed to inhabit the stone in
its natural, unhewn state? To comparative religionists, of course, only the latter explanation
would commend itself. Likewise also in the injunction in Lev. 19:9 to avoid mowing or gleaning
the comers of the wheat field, the original reason was to avoid giving offense to the vegetable
spirit who was believed to reside in the standing grain; the ostensible reason given in P (to afford
a little free grain for the destitute of the community) was a later refinement.
As for idolatry, the Documentary reconstruction of Hebrew history could find abundant evidence
that the religion of early Israel was both idolatrous and polytheistic. We may feel certain,
according to these critics, that the worship of the golden calf (Ex. 32) was endorsed by Moses
(especially if we regard the image as a cultic representation of Yahweh Himself). Otherwise
there would have been an energetic protest made in 930 B.C. when Jeroboam I of Israel set up the
calf images at Bethel and Dan—a measure to which he never would have resorted had there been
any written Mosaic law forbidding idolatry. It was only later, under the influence of the new
monotheistic prophetic school of the E period (and later on with the Priestly School, of course),
that the original tradition was so altered as to make Moses disapprove of this calf worship, and
the later invented figure of Aaron is charged with responsibility for having fashioned it in the
first place. It is alleged that Elijah failed to utter any condemnation of these calves of Jeroboam
(ca. 860–850 B.C.), showing that he was not scandalized by Jehovah worship carried on with the
aid of images (but see 1 Kings 18:18, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s
house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed Baalim,”
whose worship always involved praying to the idol of Baal). But otherwise, since we have
virtually no record of Elijah’s preaching preserved to us, this is a very questionable assertion to
make. We certainly do have a record of an outright condemnation of the image and altar of
Jeroboam at Bethel by an anonymous Jewish prophet of an earlier generation than Elijah’s,
according to 1 Kings 13. It is claimed that not even Amos himself condemned the calves. Yet
this assertion runs counter to the condemnation of the Ephraimite cultus found in Amos 3:14,
“On the day that I punish Israel’s transgressions, I will also punish the altars of Bethel; The horns
of the altar will be cut off” (NASB). As for the brazen serpent of Moses (Num. 21:8–9),
preserved until Hezekiah’s time in the national sanctuary (cf. 2 Kings 18:4), the Wellhausen
school felt confident that this was a perfectly respected idol of the serpent-god, patron of the
tribe of Levi, until the eighth century, when the prophetic monotheistic party gained dominance
in Judah, and Hezekiah had it destroyed. But this is mere conjecture devoid of any objective
evidence.
The same critics feel certain that infant sacrifice was sanctioned by the primitive faith of early
Israel. The provision of Ex. 22:29 (J-E) that a firstborn son must be redeemed by a special
offering presupposes that originally firstborn sons were sacrificed on the altar, just like the
firstlings of the livestock. Not until the time of D (it is claimed) was a clear distinction made
between the two. (Yet compare Ex. 13:1–2, a P passage, where no clearer distinction is made
between firstborn sons and firstlings than in Ex. 22:29.) The perfectly reasonable principle
enunciated by the Hebrew text, that God challenged a special propriety in the firstborn because
of His having protected all the Hebrew firstborn during the night of the Passover, is ignored
completely as a mere “priestly” rationalization.
Early Israel, according to these critics, had no written laws at all (even though the Sumerians,
Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites codified their laws as early as the time of Moses or earlier),
and the oldest legislation preserved to us in the Torah is the so-called ritual decalogue of J, in Ex.
34:11–26. Aside from the fact that this passage begins without any introductory formula as a
decalogue, and that it really contains not ten commandments but eight, it remains extremely
unlikely that the fundamental written law of the Hebrew people (as late as 850 B.C.) should omit
all sanctions against murder, adultery, larceny, fraud, and dishonor to parents. Yet, none of these
offenses is mentioned in this so-called decalogue. It should be observed that stringent provisions
on nearly all these subjects were codified in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1750 B.C.)
as well as in the Hittite and Sumerian codes. Chapter 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead lists
virtually all these crimes in the negative confessions which the deceased was expected to make
before the assembled judgment-gods of the netherworld. Is it credible that only the Hebrews
were too backward to condemn such sins, when those pagan neighbors with whom they were
most closely associated had written condemnation of them in their legal and religious literature
for nearly fifteen hundred years previously? (The main nucleus of the Book of the Dead was at
least that early.) This would seem to put too great a strain upon the credulity of even the most
partisan devotees of scientific naturalism if they were to pay any attention at all to such flimsy
arguments based upon mere Hegelian dialetic.
The Documentarians discerned in the preprophetic period a development from the grosser
polytheism of the patriarchal period to a sort of monolatry whereby the Hebrew tribes came
increasingly to devote their loyalty to Yahweh alone, as being their own national god. The plural
background of this god was, of course, betrayed by the plural state of their commonest word for
“God,” namely Elōhɩ̂ m, with its plural -ɩ̂ m ending. (Actually this is more properly to be regarded
as the plural of majesty.) In the period of the Judges, we find Jephthah negotiating with the
Ammonites in these terms (Judg. 11:24): “Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives
you to possess? And all that Yahweh our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess.” (But
it is quite obvious from the situation that Jephthah is not speaking as a theologian but as a foreign
diplomat, negotiating with them in terms which they could understand as he appealed to their
sense of fair play.) Even King David is thought to have conceded the existence of other gods in 1
Sam. 26:19: “They have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of
Jehovah, saying, Go, serve other gods.” (But this expression was simply the ancient equivalent of
“serving under another flag”; even the monotheistic Deuteronomist uses this type of language:
“Jehovah will bring thee … unto a nation that thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and
there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone” [Deut. 28:36]. Here the service of foreign
gods simply refers to servitude in a land dominated by a false heathen religion.)
The Wellhausians also insist that Hos. 3:4, “For the children of Israel shall abide many years
without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without [cultic] pillar, and without
ephod or teraphim,” implies that the idolatrous pillars and the teraphim (household gods) were
regarded by Hosea as legitimate, since the king and sacrifice, and so forth, were coupled with
them in this clause. On the contrary, however, careful attention to context shows that everything
cultic which is listed in this verse is regarded by the author as illegitimate and under the
condemnation of God: the unsanctioned Israelite dynasty (cf. Hos. 8:4, “They have set up kings,
but not by me”), the non-Levitical priesthood, the unacceptable sacrifice not offered at the
Jerusalem altar, and all the rest. No legitimacy is implied in this verse, after all, for the next verse
states that in the latter day the Israelites will return to their true God and to David, their proper
king, and worship in all purity and holiness—as they were not then doing.
Such are the textual bases for the higher critical reconstruction of the religious history of Israel
prior to the rise of the writing prophets. These arguments turn out to afford very tenuous support
for the theory of primitivism and polytheism in the post-Abrahamic period, and all their alleged
proof texts are capable of a far different interpretation which better accords with the rest of the
evidence.

The Prophetic Period According to Wellhausen

Beginning with Amos, who is considered by the critics of this school to have been the earliest of
the writing prophets, a revolutionary new change of direction is supposed to have taken place in
the religious thinking of Israel. This creative thinker from the hill country of rural Judea came
with an epoch-making new idea, the idea of monotheism: there is no God but Yahweh Himself,
and all the gods of the heathen are imaginary! Those who followed Amos, men like Hosea,
Isaiah, and Micah, enthusiastically embraced this new emphasis on monotheism and contributed
to its ultimate triumph in the religion of Israel. In Jeremiah’s time this movement produced its
classic manifesto in the book of Deuteronomy, in which the uniqueness and supremacy of
Jehovah were proclaimed with prophetic fervor and then attributed to the venerable figure of
Moses. In many respects, according to these critics, this prophetic period (760–587 B.C.)
represents the highest and purest achievement of the religion of Israel. As interpreted and
expurgated by nineteenth-century Liberalism, these Hebrew prophets pretty largely hewed to the
line of the Liberal gospel, with its emphasis upon social justice and salvation by good works or
noble character. From this standpoint the postprophetic movement initiated by Ezekiel and the
Priestly School represented a retrogression into ritualism and formalism and emphasis upon such
priestly functions as atoning sacrifices.
In this connection it is interesting (perhaps even amusing) to read this vivid description of the
radical change between the preprophetic period and the age of the prophets, as expressed by
Lewis Browne: The prophets of the eighth century “transformed a jealous demon who roared and
belched fire from the crater of a volcano into a transcendent spirit of love. They took a bloody
and remorseless protector of a desert people, and without realizing it, changed him into the
merciful Father of all mankind. In fine, they destroyed Yahweh and created God!” This is surely
a masterpiece of misstatement and misrepresentation, shot through with fallacies from beginning
to end, but it illustrates the perverted notion of Hebrew religion taught in many quarters today as
a popularization of the Wellhausen hypothesis. Suffice it to say that there is surely no parallel to
this to be found anywhere else in human history, that neither the introducers of a radically new
concept of God nor those to whom they introduced it realized that there was anything new about
it. Both the prophets themselves and their audiences seemed to labor under the impression that it
was the God of Moses whose message they were transmitting. They claimed to be summoning
their countrymen to return once more to the ancestral God of the patriarchs, to the God of Mount
Sinai and the Exodus (cf. Hos. 11:1; 12:9, 13; Amos 2:10; 9:7; Mic. 6:4; 7:15), not to any new,
watered-down deity capable of nothing but sweetness and light. Lewis Browne would be well
advised to reread Isa. 24, 34, and 63, if he supposes that any of the thunder and smoke was
removed from God’s judicial wrath by the innovating prophets of the newer, more enlightened
age.
In order to demonstrate this opposition to sacrifice as having been indeed the emphasis of the
prophets, the architects of the Development Hypothesis felt that they had only to cite a few proof
texts and to interpret them in their own special way (out of context). Thus it was possible to
show that the great prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries rejected any system of blood
sacrifice as a valid way of access to God, even denying that it had any Mosaic validity. There
were four favorite passages which they used for this purpose.
Amos 5:21–26: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn
assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept
them.… But let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream. Did ye bring
unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Yea, ye have
borne the tabernacle of your king [Sakkuth your king, RSV] and the shrine of your images
[Kaiwan your star-god, RSV], the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.” (Actually the
tense of “borne” can be rendered: “Ye were bearing,” or even—although this is against the
context—“Ye will bear.”) The Documentarians interpret this question to imply the answer: “No,
we never did bring God sacrifices and offerings during the Exodus wanderings.” Much more
reasonably Amos’ question may be taken at face value to mean: “Did you offer sacrifices to Me
at that time? Yes, you did, but what impure and unacceptable sacrifices they were (just like those
you offer Me in this corrupt generation), for you also carried on the clandestine worship of idols,
even in the days of Moses!” This surely is the interpretation which best accords with the stream
of the argument which Amos is developing in this chapter.
Micah 6:6–8: “Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah?… Shall I come before him with burnt-
offerings, with calves a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams?… He hath
showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?” This is construed to mean that Micah
rejects the principle of sacrifice altogether, and that God desires only a virtuous life to satisfy His
requirements for salvation. But this is to foist a modern Liberal notion upon the teaching of the
ancient prophet. It is obvious from the context that Micah was dealing with the problem of
religious formalism accompanied by an ungodly and immoral life on the part of the Jewish
worshiper. Even the most lavish and extravagant offerings upon the altar cannot make up for the
lack of heart submission and of a sincere purpose to obey the will of God in matters of practical
ethics. Acceptable worship must proceed from a surrendered life. There is no rejection of the
sacrificial cultus as such, but only as a hypocritical substitute for true godliness.
Isaiah 1:11–17 is another prophetic utterance along the same line: “What unto me is the
multitude of your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of the burnt-offerings of rams,
and the fat of fed beasts.… Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the
fatherless, plead for the widow.” This is interpreted by Wellhausians to be a plea to do away with
the ceremonialism of blood sacrifices and get down to the business of performing meritorious
good works, thus earning their salvation (just as good Liberals of our modern age are expected to
do). But that this exegesis falls wide of the mark is sufficiently indicated by the statement in
verse 15: “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye
make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” If the previous remarks
amounted to a rejection of blood sacrifice as such, then it must logically follow here that prayer
also is being rejected as such, since the same type of expression is used in both cases. But not
even the most enlightened modern Liberal would like to think that the prophet Isaiah was
opposed to prayer; if only from the standpoint of subjective therapy, prayer must be regarded as
both beneficial and praiseworthy. All parties would acknowledge that the prophet is not denying
the validity of prayer, but only the prayer of bloody-handed, unrepentant miscreants who mock
God by the very prayers they mouth. In other words, acceptable worship must be based upon a
true and living faith as it finds expression in a God-fearing life. Hence it follows that the same
principle governs in Isaiah’s deprecatory remarks about sacrifices and feast days. By no means
does he deny that they were ordained of God in the law of Moses.
Jeremiah 7:22–23: “For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I
brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices: but this thing I
commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my
people; and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.” What
could be more obvious, asks the critic, than that Jeremiah here is denying (ca. 600 B.C.) that God
had ever spoken to Moses about the sacrificial cultus? Obviously the material of P could not yet
have been composed by that time, but only centuries later, as an addendum to J, E, and D,
otherwise Jeremiah would never have made a statement like that. But if we analyze what the
prophet is actually saying in this passage, we find that the words quoted come from Ex. 19,
before even the first installment of the law was revealed to Moses by God, even before the
promulgation of the Ten Commandments in Ex. 20. It certainly was true that “in the day that I
brought them out of the land of Egypt” God had not yet said anything to the Israelites about
sacrifice or burnt offering. (Even the Passover lamb involved no altar, according to Ex. 12.) He
first closed with them on the basis of a covenant engagement requiring absolute and
unconditional obedience as a condition of the covenant. It was only afterward that the provisions
concerning sacrifice were outlined to Moses. The point was that Jeremiah’s contemporaries had
been substituting ritual ceremonies for genuine piety, and they needed to be reminded that
historically God’s first summons to Israel had been for absolute obedience to His moral law
before He ever gave them a provision for sins in the atoning blood of the altar of sacrifice.
Incidentally, it is instructive to note Jeremiah’s cordial approval of the sacrificial system
elsewhere in his prophecy: 17:19–27, concerning hallowing the Sabbath; 31:14, God will satiate
the priests with fatness; 33:11, 18, the Levitical priests shall “never lack a man before Me to
offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to prepare sacrifices continually.”
Thus the Documentarian critics assigned virtually all cultic regulations to the Priestly School of
the post-exilic period. But they regarded certain of the noncultic legal provisions of the Torah as
originating with E or J-E, notably the book of the covenant (Ex. 21–23). This body of law was
supposed to have evolved from the experience of Israel in the land of Canaan over a period of
four or five centuries after the conquest. This code did not suggest the unique legitimacy of one
central sanctuary. On the contrary, it sanctioned any number of local sanctuaries, according to
Ex. 20:24: “An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-
offerings … in every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee.”
Closer examination, however, shows that this passage is not referring to the possibility of
multiple sanctuaries at all, but only to the type of altar to be used for God’s worship, prior to the
fashioning of the bronze altar for the tabernacle. Not until later (as is recorded in Ex. 40) was the
tabernacle completed and the divinely prescribed altar dedicated. No doubt also it was to serve as
a principle to follow in situations where resort to the altar at the central sanctuary was
impractical (as for example where Elijah built his altar on Mount Carmel, 1 Kings 18:31). Allis
(FBM, p. 173) suggests that the words of Ex. 20:24 translated, “in every place where I record my
name,” might be better rendered, “in all of the place” (bekol-hammāqōm), that is, in all of
Palestine. (Properly speaking, “in every place” would be bekol māqōm, without the definite
article ha-.) The idea then would be that in all of the Holy Land, where God will cause His name
to be remembered, He will come to His worshipers and bless them.
In general, the Documentarians insist that the historical fact that many local sanctuaries were
maintained in Israel prior to Josiah’s reign is proof positive that there could have been no Mosaic
laws in existence forbidding them. Had there been such laws, they would of course have been
obeyed. But this reasoning is vitiated by the undeniable fact that even after the reform of Josiah
in 621 B.C., idolatrous high places continued to be maintained in Judah (cf. Ezek. 6:3). The
critics acknowledge that “Mosaic” laws forbidding all other sanctuaries besides the local one
were solemnly adopted in the reign of Josiah. Yet in the time of Zedekiah, Josiah’s third
successor, the high places were still in operation. In this case the Wellhausians themselves must
acknowledge that this law was broken even after its enactment. If so, why may this not have
been the case in preceding centuries as well, that local sanctuaries were maintained even after the
temple of Solomon had been dedicated? In general we may say that the argument that laws could
not have existed simply because they were ignored, is altogether too naive. On such a basis one
would have to deny that there are any laws against robbery or adultery in existence in modern
America!
So far as the Mosaic prohibition of local sanctuaries is concerned, it ought to be pointed out that
not even Deuteronomy prohibits the erection of local altars to Yahweh until such time as God
shall have indicated His choice of a holy capital city in which alone it would be permissible to
present sacrifice. In Deut. 12:10–11, the regulation is made that after the Lord has given His
people rest from all their enemies round about—which did not take place until the reign of
David—then God would choose a special place for worship to which all Israel should resort for
cultic purposes. Hence there is no contradiction at all between E (in Ex. 20:24) and D (in Deut.
12:10–11). Moreover, it should be observed that wherever the idolatrous high places, or even
Jehovah-worshiping high places are referred to in the Hebrew record after the consecration of
Solomon’s temple, they are always spoken of as deviations from the Mosaic law, and the
successive kings of Judah are often judged as to their character by whether or not they removed
the “high places.” On the other hand, even J offers considerable difficulty to the theory that no
centrality of worship was cherished as an ideal at the time of the Exodus, for in Ex. 23:17 it is
required that all Israelite males “appear before Jehovah” three times a year (that is, at the three
great feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles). There would hardly be any point to this
provision if all that was required was to put in an appearance at one’s own local shrine. Thus
even the earliest stratum of the Pentateuch (according to the JEDP hypothesis) implies a central
point of worship as prescribed by Jehovah.
In this connection it should be noted that the Wellhausen School tends to dismiss the Mosaic
tabernacle as a figment of the imagination of the Priestly School. There never was any such
structure as the tabernacle, they feel, but it was invented by the Priestly School to furnish a
Mosaic sanction for the Jerusalem temple. In the interests of this theory, therefore, all references
to the tabernacle are automatically assigned to P in the Pentateuch, and also those passages
where reference is made to the tabernacle in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. Having thus by
definition assigned all mention of the tabernacle to the Priestly School, it becomes possible for
these critics to come up with the triumphant conclusion that no pre-exilic work ever makes any
mention of the tabernacle. But this of course is a mere question-begging procedure, rather than
an objective handling of the evidence.
Further embarrassment is furnished to this theory (that there was no central sanctuary regulation
until Josiah’s time) by the positive indications of the record of pre-Josianic times contained in
Kings. Certainly the dedicatory prayer of Solomon (cf. especially 1 Kings 8:29–30) implies the
unique validity of this temple and its altar, as if already in Solomon’s time it was the only lawful
and proper place of worship for believing Israel. After his accession in 931 B.C., Jeroboam found
it necessary to restrain his subjects of the northern ten tribes from going down to Jerusalem to
worship by resorting to the erection of a rival sanctuary in Bethel containing a golden calf (1
Kings 12:26–28). This concern of Jereboam’s presupposes the previously unique status of the
Jerusalem temple as the central sanctuary in Solomon’s time, for it is unlikely that there had been
a multiplicity of local sanctuaries practicing idolatry during the Divided Monarchy when not a
single idolatrous cult object has yet been found in Israelite strata from this period (Aalders, A
Short Introduction to the Pentateuch [London: Tyndale], 1949, p. 81). As for the period of
Hezekiah, a good century before Josiah’s reform, the Hebrew record declares that he enforced
the unique claim of the Jerusalem temple by forcibly suppressing all sacrifice and worship at the
local high places throughout his domain. It is very difficult to dispose of this reform under
Hezekiah as a fictitious prototype of the Josianic revival, as some critics attempt to do. The
record of Sennacherib’s attempt to capture Jerusalem by threats and negotiation is very
circumstantial and convincing as to its historicity. In the course of his parley with the Jewish
envoy, the Assyrian commander, Rabshakeh, seeks to discourage the defenders of Jerusalem
from looking to Jehovah for deliverance, saying: “But if ye say unto me, We trust in Jehovah our
God; is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said
unto Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?” (2 Kings 18:22).
This incidental reference to Hezekiah’s enforcement of the unique claim of the Jerusalem temple
is corroborative testimony of a very high order. It is hard to explain this away as a “priestly”
embellishment, since the critics do not otherwise contest the authenticity of this account of
Sennacherib’s invasion.
At this point we should mention some of the major difficulties standing in the way of dating the
legal provisions of J-E and D between 850 and 600 B.C. As George Mendenhall points out: “It is
hard to conceive of a law code which could be more at variance from what we know of
Canaanite culture than the Covenant Code (Ex. 21–23—J-E).… The Canaanite cities were
predominantly commercial, rigidly stratified in social structure.… The Covenant Code shows no
social stratification, for the slaves mentioned are not members of the community, with the single
exception of the daughter who is sold as an amah or slave-wife (who is herself strongly protected
by law).… The laws of the Covenant Code reflect the customs, morality and religious obligations
of the Israelite community (or perhaps some specific Israelite community of the North) before
the monarchy … since it exhibits just that mixture of case law and apodictic law (technique and
policy respectively) which we find in covenants from the Hittite sources and in Mesopotamian
codes as well, any study which assumes that it is a later, artificial composite from originally
independent literary sources may be assigned rather to rational ingenuity than to historical fact.”
At the same time Mendenhall reasons that the Pentateuchal laws must have originated
subsequently to the Conquest since they have in view a sedentary population rather than a desert
nomad society. But this argument overlooks the obvious and announced purpose of the Mosaic
code: it was to serve for Israel’s guidance after it had conquered and settled the promised land,
not while it was on the march through the Sinai wilderness.
As to the familiar argument of the Documentarians that the Mosaic law could not have been in
existence during the preprophetic era since it is never referred to in the (carefully expurgated)
documents J and E, Mendenhall has another interesting observation to make. The written law
codes of the ancient Semites, he says, were of little importance in actual court procedures. Thus
in the thousands of Old Babylonian legal documents subsequent to the inscribing of
Hammurabi’s Code, not once is that code explicitly referred to. “If, as we believe, the same was
true in Israel, the lack of references to the codified law in the prophets and historical works
proves nothing at all concerning the existence of a law code” (such as the book of the covenant,
Ex. 21–23). Here, then, the argument from silence is demonstrably false, since the same
reasoning would disprove the prior existence of Hammurabi’s Code as well, even though that
code has been preserved to us from Hammurabi’s own time.
Last, it ought to be pointed out that neither J nor E betrays the slightest inkling of an awareness
of the existence of a monarchy in Israel. Nowhere is there any suggestion whatsoever that the
twelve tribes were to be under the rule of a king, and the only prophetic indication that there
would be such a thing as a human sovereign over Israel is found in Gen. 49:10 (J): “The scepter
shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” This seems very hard to
reconcile with the supposition that the nation had existed as a monarchy for three centuries
before J found written form. Even D devotes only a few verses for the direction of a possible
future king over Israel (Deut. 17:14–20), and even there gives the impression that the
appointment of a king is a remote eventuality in the future. Stranger yet, the assertedly post-
exilic document P betrays no consciousness whatever of the institution of royalty. This seems
impossible to reconcile with the supposition that the chosen line of David had reigned for more
than four centuries in the holy city of Jerusalem. Surely any author manufacturing a Mosaic
warrant for the institutions of the priesthood would have attributed to the great lawgiver a very
strong and explicit sanction for the kingship as well. It is hardly conceivable that any patriotic
Jewish author, who believed in the divine authorization of the Davidic dynasty, could have
passed it over in complete silence. All the legal codes of other ancient Near Eastern nations ruled
over by monarchs have much to say concerning the duties and prerogatives of their kings. The
only reasonable explanation for the fact that P and E are completely silent concerning Hebrew
royalty is that there was not yet any king over Israel when they were written. The isolated
predictions in J and D lead to a similar conclusion; if composed during the monarchical period,
as the Documentarians assert, regulations involving royalty would necessarily have been woven
throughout the fabric of these “documents.”

12
Wellhausen’s Reconstruction of Hebrew History
in the Priestly Period

Introduction: Wellhausen’s Reconstruction (Priestly Period)

ACCORDING TO THE WELLHAUSEN HYPOTHESIS, the decline and fall of the Jewish
monarchy, with the subsequent deportation of the Israelites into captivity, compelled them to
surrender political aspirations and look to their religious institutions as a basis for continuing
existence as a nation. For this reason the professional priesthood of the tribe of Levi assumed
increasing importance, and the ritual practices were elaborated into the form in which they were
finally codified in Document P. Prior to the Exile, according to this theory, there had been no
really standardized regulations binding upon all the faithful, but worship and sacrifice were
conducted according to simple and flexible patterns. While this sounded all very well according
to Evolutionary Theory, there were some nineteenth-century researchers in the field of
comparative religions who had misgivings. Even so staunch a Wellhausen supporter as W.
Robertson Smith felt that Wellhausen was mistaken in supposing that an anxious care to fulfill
ritual requirements was postexilic only. On the contrary, it existed among all the Semites from
the earliest stages of their cultural development. Rather than the antithetical epochs of the
Wellhausian (Hegelian) doctrine, Smith felt that there was a continuous development through
successive periods. For example, Smith believed that the atonement and communion type of
sacrifice was early, because based upon the clan type of society; but that the meal offering and
heave offering were later, because they were based upon a stage in society when property rights
were recognized.
According to the Documentary Theory, there was a clear line of development in the restriction of
the priesthood to the family of Aaron. At first the priesthood was open to all Israelites (“And ye
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests,” Ex. 19:6, a J-E verse). Actually this statement in Ex. 19:6
refers to the role of Israel as God’s covenant nation over against all the Gentile, heathen nations,
who needed the mediatorship of the Hebrew people if they were ever going to learn of the one
true God. Besides, there is a great difference between the statement: “Ye are a kingdom of
priests” and the statement: “Any Israelite is eligible for the priesthood.” It is asserted that J-E
does not even restrict the priesthood to the tribe of Levi. This, of course, is true, for by definition
all references to the priesthood are automatically assigned to P even when they occur in the midst
of a J or E passage. But certainly the Documentarians are unable to point to a single passage in
the Pentateuch subsequent to Aaron’s ordination in Lev. 8 that permits any non-Levite to become
a priest. (Not even the Torah itself implies that the priesthood was restricted to Levi prior to
Aaron’s consecration.)
The next stage, according to Wellhausen, was represented by Deuteronomy (assertedly forged in
621 B.C.), which restricts the priesthood to the tribe of Levi in general, although not to the family
of Aaron in particular. Any Levite may become a priest, according to D, and it was not until the
time of the Priestly Code (550–450 B.C.) that this honor was confined to the descendants of
Aaron alone. Yet actually it can be demonstrated that D was quite aware of a distinction between
the family of Aaron and the rest of the Levites. For example, in Deut. 27:12–14 it was ordained
that the tribe of Levi stand with five other tribes on the slope of Mount Gerizim, while the other
six tribes stand over against Mount Ebal. But in the valley between the two groups a select group
of Levites was to stand, that is, “the priests the Levites” (cf. v. 9), and they were the ones who
were to recite a distinctive series of divine curses. It is difficult to avoid the inference that this
select group in the valley were Aaronic priests. Likewise in 1 Kings 8:4, a passage attributed by
Driver to a Deuteronomistic compiler (ILOT, p. 181), there is a distinction implied between the
priests and the Levites: “And they brought up the ark of Jehovah … even these [holy vessels] did
the priests and the Levites bring up.” (Kuenen felt constrained on dogmatic grounds to snip this
verse out of its Deuteronomic context and assign it to P.)
The first stage of restriction of the priesthood came with the latter part of Ezekiel’s ministry, it is
claimed. For Ezekiel (44:7–16) was the first one to assign an inferior status to all Levites not of
the family of Zadok (a contemporary of David descended from Aaron). But the context makes it
clear that the special status of the family of Zadok was due to the fact that during the apostasy of
the seventh and early sixth centuries, only this division of Aaron’s posterity steadfastly refused
to cooperate with the idolatrous policies of the Jewish government. It is difficult to see,
moreover, how this narrowing down of the priesthood to the descendants of Zadok alone
furnished a basis for the extension of sacerdotal status to the whole posterity of Aaron.
Nevertheless, according to the Development Hypothesis, this is precisely what happened. From
the earlier stage of accessibility to the whole tribe, the priesthood was narrowed down to one
small subclan of the descendants of Aaron, and finally thrown open to all Aaronids without
distinction. The logical progression here is difficult to see.
At any rate according to this theory, the final stage was the supremacy of the family of Aaron
within the tribe of Levi, a development which took place during the Babylonian Exile. This
theory is usually bolstered by the contention that Aaron himself was a fictitious character who
had no place in the original traditions of Moses and the Exodus. But in order to sustain this
contention it was necessary for these critics to deal with many J passages in which Aaron’s name
appeared (e.g., Ex. 4:14–16, 27–30), at least thirteen occurrences. Each of these had to be lifted
out of the J context and branded as P insertions. By this procedure it became possible to come
out triumphantly with the dictum: “Aaron is never mentioned in J.” Also the deferral of the high-
priestly office to the time of the Exile is somewhat embarrassed by the prominence of certain
high priests mentioned in pre-exilic Jewish history, men like Jehoiada (2 Kings 12:9), Hilkiah (2
Kings 22:4, 8), and Seraiah (2 Kings 25:18).
The contention that the rise of the priestly school was accompanied by an exaltation of the family
of Aaron led quite naturally to the corollary that it was precisely in this same period (550–450
B.C.) that ritual came to the forefront in Judah. Hence the numerous passages in Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers which deal with matters of ritual and sacrifice are to be regarded as
belonging to the latest portion of the Torah, and the technical terms of sacrifice come largely
from the vocabulary of the Exilic Period. But as we have already pointed out at the beginning of
this chapter, W. R. Smith dissented from the view that in the earlier stages of religion there was
little concern for ritual requirements. He felt that the testimony of comparative religions pointed
to the contrary, and that even quite primitive peoples lay great emphasis upon following
prescribed procedure in offering sacrifice and other cultic observances. But this is no longer a
mere matter of opinion, for with the unearthing of the extensive Ugaritic literature from Ras
Shamra (dating back to 1400 B.C. or earlier), it has been discovered that many of the technical
terms of sacrifice branded by Wellhausen as exilic turn up in this early period. Even in so remote
a corner of the Canaanite-speaking world as Ugarit we find such P terms as ishsheh (“offering
made by fire”), “whole burnt offering” (kālɩ̂ l), “peace offerings” (shɩlāmɩ̂ m), and probably āshām
(“guilt offering”). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these terms were already current in
Palestine at the time of Moses and the conquest, and that the whole line of reasoning which made
out the terminology of the Levitical cultus to be late is devoid of foundation.
In order to support a late date for the Priestly Code it is usually asserted that none of its
provisions or ordinances is mentioned in any of the pre-exilic literature; the preexilic authors
seem to be quite ignorant of them. Therefore, it is urged, the material contained in document P
must have been composed after the fall of Jerusalem (587 B.C.). Driver says, “The pre-exilic
period shows no indications of P being in operation” (ILOT, p. 136). Again, “Nor is the
legislation of P presupposed in Deuteronomy” (p. 137). These assertions, however, are not
supported by the textual evidence. The preexilic historical books in general, and Deuteronomy in
particular, do in fact refer to Levitical legislation as already in being and as binding upon the
conscience of Israel.
In the first place, it is significant how even Driver himself is compelled to qualify the sweeping
generalizations just quoted when he discusses Deut. 14:3–20: “Here is a long passage virtually
identical in Deuteronomy and Leviticus [i.e., Lev. 11:2–23, concerning clean and unclean
animals]; and that it is borrowed by D from P—or at least from a priestly collection of tôrôth—
rather than conversely, appears from certain features of style which connect it with P and not
with Deuteronomy.… If so, however, one part of P was in existence when Deuteronomy was
written” (ILOT, pp. 137–38). But actually this is not the only such section in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 15:1 refers to the year of release, just as it was ordained in Lev. 25:2–7. Moreover
Deut. 23:9–10 implies a knowledge of those laws of ceremonial impurity which are contained in
Lev. 15:16. Deuteronomy 24:8, “Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently
and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so
shall ye observe to do.” This expressly affirms the existence of a Mosaic law of leprosy which
had been given to the priests (as in Lev. 13 and 14). Other references in Deuteronomy which
point explicitly to P laws pertain to Lev. 11, 13–15, 17–19, and Num. 18:20–24. If these are
really old laws (as Driver suggests) which existed prior to the codification of P, then (as Orr
points out in POT, p. 315), “These old laws must have been so extremely like those we possess
in Leviticus that it is hardly worth disputing about the differences, and the argument against the
pre-exilian existence of the Levitical law goes for nothing.”
But it is not only in Deuteronomy that these references to P legislation appear. In the 755 B.C.
text of Amos 2:11–12, we read: “And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young
men for Nazarites.… But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink.” This passage implies a
knowledge of Num. 6:1–21 (P), the only place in the Old Testament where the order of Nazarites
is established; the prohibition against their drinking wine is found in Num. 6:3 (P). Again, in
Amos 4:5 condemnation is voiced of those who “offer a sacrifice … of that which is leavened,”
which certainly alludes to the provision found in Lev. 2:11 (P), where the use of leaven in
sacrifice was forbidden. Such characteristic P terms as burnt offering, meal offering, and peace
offering, all occur in Amos 5:22 (cf. Lev. 7:11–14; 8:1–32). Likewise we meet with free will
offering (nedābāh) in Amos 4:5 (cf. Lev. 7:16–18; 22:18; Num. 15:3—all P passages), and
solemn assembly (˓aṣārāh) in Amos 5:21 (Lev. 23:36; Num. 29:35).
The only reasonable inference from all these references (including those also which allude to
Deuteronomy) is that already in 755 B.C. there was a written body of law, including both P and
D, and labeled by the prophet himself as the Torah of Yahweh (Amos 2:4), and accepted by his
public as an authentic and authoritative body of legislation binding upon them. Nor is there the
slightest hint or suggestion that either Amos himself or any other representatives of the Prophetic
School were attempting any innovation or promulgating any new teaching in theology or in the
cult. Pfeiffer and Eissfeldt have attempted to evade the impact of this evidence from Amos by
asserting that all such allusions to the Torah are later insertions. But surely this is a counsel of
desperation which contrasts markedly with the confident assertion of Graf, Kuenen, and
Wellhausen, that no traces of P legislation are to be found in any pre-exilic Hebrew literature.
This was an argument allegedly based upon the evidence of the biblical text itself. When
therefore the text itself refutes the claim, there is no reasonable alternative but to withdraw it as
unfounded. Nor is this kind of evidence confined to Amos, for it is also found in Hosea.
Compare Hos. 8:11–12: “For Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning.… I wrote for him the ten
thousand things of my law; but they are accounted as a strange thing.” It is difficult to see in this
expression, “ten thousand things of my law,” a mere reference to J and E, in which the legislative
element is quite negligible.
It should be borne in mind in this connection that a customary method for ascertaining the date
when a document was written is to take stock of all references to contemporary conditions, social
and political, which it contains; particularly the incidental allusions (for these are apt to betray
the true date of even spurious works which pretend to have been written earlier than they really
were). Applying this investigative method to the “Priestly Code,” we find that the internal
evidence points with almost overwhelming conclusiveness to a date long before the Babylonian
Exile; it is impossible to square many features of P with what we know of post-exilic conditions.
For example:
1. The tabernacle of Exodus and Leviticus (regarded by Wellhausen as mere fiction, projected
back to Moses’ time to furnish a warrant for the temple at Jerusalem) had but one table of
shewbread (whereas Solomon’s temple had ten), and only one lampstand (Solomon’s had ten),
and measured only ten cubits by thirty (whereas the temple was twenty by sixty). The
dimensions represent a 200 percent increase, whereas the articles of furniture were multiplied
1000 percent.
2. Note also that this allegedly fictitious tabernacle was stated by P to have been dedicated on the
first of Nisan (Ex. 40:2), whereas the post-exilic temple of Zerubbabel was dedicated on the third
of Adar (Ezra 6:15) and the temple of Solomon some time in the month of Ethanim, or Tishri (1
Kings 8:2).
3. The post-exilic temple apparently lacked the Ark of the Covenant and its two Tables of the
Decalogue (for no mention is made of them after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.), and yet they
figured very prominently in P’s tabernacle.
4. The post-exilic priesthood is never referred to as possessing the Urim and Thummim, or as
wearing an ephod, in any purportedly post-exilic record (although they may perhaps have done
so).
5. Very striking is the contrast between P with its single fast (the Day of Atonement) and the
three or four major fasts observed by the post-exilic Jews (cf. Zech. 8:19). Certainly any exilic or
post-exilic priests, seeking to manufacture Mosaic sanctions for all their cherished contemporary
rites and institutions, would not have failed to include some sort of warrant for at least some of
the extra fasts.
6. As regards the celebration of the Passover, P (Ex. 12:7, 46) permits the eating of the Passover
meal in private homes—a license hardly compatible with a monopolistic priesthood—rather than
insisting upon its celebration at the central sanctuary (as Deut. 16:5–12 ordains). Apparently, the
Ex. 12 provision had in view Israel’s nomadic existence prior to the Conquest, whereas
Deuteronomy looked forward to conditions prevailing in Palestine after its conquest and
settlement.
7. As for the cities of refuge, mentioned so prominently in P (Num. 35:9–14), they are never
mentioned as such in the post-exilic records. Furthermore, most of them were situated well
outside the boundaries of the Persian province of Judea in Ezra’s time.
8. Elements in the Jewish ritual and temple service which figured very prominently in the post-
exilic period receive no mention whatsoever in this allegedly priest-inspired document, P. Thus,
we find no reference whatsoever to (1) the Levitical guild of temple singers; (2) the scribes, of
which Ezra himself was the acknowledged leader; (3) the temple servants known as the
Nethinim; (4) the employment of musical instruments. It is impossible to explain how a
professional priestly group, manufacturing a spurious law of Moses for the purpose of justifying
and enforcing their claims to special authority, could have failed to include Mosaic sanctions for
any of these items. Nor, for that matter, is it explicable how J and E and D could have failed to
mention items (1), (3), and (4), if they were in fact composed later than the reign of Solomon
(970–931 B.C.), under whom the temple singers, Nethinim, and musical instruments were
intimately involved in the temple cultus. It is therefore difficult to account for this astonishing
silence about matters of peculiarly priestly interest, except upon the basis that P was in fact
composed before Solomon’s time.
9. In this connection it ought to be pointed out that the holy city of Jerusalem is never mentioned
in the Mosaic legislation. There is a reference to Melchizedek, king of Salem, in Gen. 14; Mount
Moriah is named as the scene of Isaac’s near-sacrifice; and “the mountain of thine inheritance” is
a phrase appearing in Ex. 15:17. But never once is Jerusalem referred to as such in the Torah.
How is it possible that after five hundred years of existence as the religious and political capital
of the Jewish commonwealth, the assorted contributors to document P neglected to include any
slightest sanction for the holy city? Not even by later interpolations (such as apparently crept into
the Samaritan text of the Torah to establish the sanctity of their holy Mount Gerizim) were Zion
and Jerusalem certified as the uniquely acceptable place in which to offer sacrifice according to
either P or J or E. Even Deuteronomy leaves the “place Jehovah shall choose” (12:5, 14; 16:16)
altogether anonymous, though it would have been very easy for a seventh-century author to
insert at least the name of Jerusalem, even if he hesitated to disturb the illusion of Mosaic origin
by specifying its future importance. A large number of other Palestinian cities are referred to by
name in document D, but never Jerusalem.
10. Lastly it should be pointed out that one of the most frequent and characteristic titles of God
employed by the post-exilic prophets and authors is never once found in the entire Pentateuch.
This title is Jehovah of Hosts (Yahweh Ṣebā˒ôt), which occurs sixty-seven times in Isaiah (in
sixty-six chapters), eighty-three times in Jeremiah (in fifty-two chapters), thirteen times in
Haggai (in two chapters), fifty-one times in Zechariah (fourteen chapters), and twenty-five times
in Malachi (three or four chapters). This indicates a mounting frequency or popularity for this
title culminating in the three post-exilic prophets: Haggai (6.5 times per chapter), Zechariah (3.5
times per chapter), and Malachi (6 to 8 times per chapter). It is well-nigh impossible to explain
how Yahweh Ṣebā˒ôt could fail to appear in document P, if in fact it was composed after the
exile. (While it is true that Ezekiel does not use this title either, the Documentary Theory
attributes strong Ezekiel influence only to H, i.e., Lev. 17–26, and dates the rest of P as arising
between 550 and 450 B.C.) No other title for God approaches the frequency with which this one
was used by the very prophets in whose generation this Priestly Code was supposedly being
composed. (At the same time it should be recognized that the narrative authors, Ezra and
Nehemiah, do not employ this expression except in Chronicles. For some reason it was not much
used by the Jews dwelling in Babylonia.) It occurred eleven times in 1 and 2 Samuel, six times in
Kings, but not once in the entire Pentateuch. The most natural inference to draw from these data
is that Yahweh Ṣebā˒ôt did not come into vogue as a title for God until after the period of the
Judges, and that P, along with J, E, and D, was composed before the age of the Judges began.

13
Archaeological Evidence for the Antiquity of
the Pentateuch
 Introduction: Antiquity of the Pentateuch

IT WAS ONLY NATURAL that the Wellhausen Hypothesis should base its judgments concerning
the historicity of the Old Testament record upon the data of archaeology then available in the
nineteenth century. Yet those data were regrettably meager during the formative period of the
Documentary Theory, and it was possible on the basis of the ignorance which then prevailed to
discount many statements in Scripture which had not yet found archaeological confirmation.
For example, at that time it was assumed that writing was relatively unknown in Palestine during
the Mosaic period, and that no part of the Pentateuch could, therefore, have found, for example, a
written form until the tenth or ninth centuries B.C. The references to the Hittites, for example,
were treated with incredulity and condemned as mere fiction on the part of the late authors of the
Torah; the same was true of the Horites and even the historicity of Sargon II (722–705 B.C.),
since no extrabiblical references to him had yet been discovered. The existence of such a king as
Belshazzar (in the book of Daniel) was ruled out of possibility because no Greek author had
mentioned him, and the biblical record could be presumed to be wrong. But since the days of
Hupfeld, Graf, and Kuenen, archaeological discovery has confirmed the use of alphabetic writing
in the Canaanite-speaking cultures before 1500 B.C., and has contributed large numbers of
documents to demonstrate the existence and major importance of both the Hittites and Horites
(or Hurrians, as they are more commonly known), and also cuneiform tablets containing the
name of Belshazzar, as viceroy under Nabonidus.
Thus it has come about that in case after case after case where alleged historical inaccuracy was
pointed to as proof of late and spurious authorship of the biblical documents, the Hebrew record
has been vindicated by the results of recent excavation, and the condemnatory judgments of the
Documentarian Theorists have been proved without foundation. W. E Albright, esteemed the
foremost archaeologist of his generation, and a man who was himself brought up on the
Wellhausen theory, had this to say in 1941: “Archaeological and inscriptional data have
established the historicity of innumerable passages and statements of the Old Testament; the
number of such cases is many times greater than those where the reverse has been proved or has
been made probable.” Further on in the same article he said, “Wellhausen still ranks in our eyes
as the greatest Biblical scholar of the nineteenth century. But his standpoint is antiquated and his
picture of the early evolution of Israel is sadly distorted.” A more recent author, John Elder,
states: “It is not too much to say that it was the rise of the science of archaeology that broke the
deadlock between historians and the orthodox Christian. Little by little, one city after another,
one civilization after another, one culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in
the Bible, were restored to their proper places in ancient history by the studies of
archaeologists.… Contemporary records of Biblical events have been unearthed and the
uniqueness of Biblical revelation has been emphasized by contrast and comparison to newly
discovered religions of ancient peoples. Nowhere has archaeological discovery refuted the Bible
as history.” J. A. Thompson affirms, “Finally, it is perfectly true to say that biblical archaeology
has done a great deal to correct the impression that was abroad at the close of the last century and
in the early part of this century, that Biblical history was of doubtful trustworthiness in many
places. If one impression stands out more clearly than another today, it is that on all hands the
over-all historicity of the Old Testament tradition is admitted.”
 WORLD EMPIRES OF THE BIBLE

EMPIRE DATE

Assyria 740–612 B.C.

Babylonia 612–539 B.C.

Medo-Persia 539–331 B.C.

Macedonia 332–301 B.C.

Diadochi 301–63 B.C.

Rome 189 B.C.–A.D. 476

The Eastern Roman Empire continued until A.D. 1453

This chapter cannot do justice to so extensive a subject as the entire field of biblical archaeology,
but can only bring out a few of the best-known and most significant discoveries of the post-
Wellhausen era. Standard works on this subject are: Albright, W. F., The Archaeology of
Palestine; Barton, G. A., Archaeology and the Bible, a work consisting largely in translations of
ancient pagan documents having a relevance for the Old Testament; Finegan, J., Light from the
Ancient Past, which contains more extensive discussion and less actual translation; Free, J. P.,
Archaeology and Bible History, a conservative treatment of the field on a semi-popular level;
Price, I. M., et al., The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Judson, 1958), an
extensive revision of an older work, which surveys the field on a semipopular level from a
moderately Liberal standpoint; Pritchard, J. B. (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts, which is now
the standard translation for almost all the ancient documents and literature having a bearing upon
the Bible; Thomas, D. W (ed.), Documents from Old Testament Times (New York: Harper &
Row, 1958), containing an excellent anthology of ancient non-biblical texts in translation, with
introductions and notes; Unger, M. E, Archaeology and the Old Testament, contains a somewhat
more thorough and up-to-date discussion from the conservative standpoint than Free’s
Archaeology and Bible History.
In the following pages an attempt is made to group some of the foremost discoveries affecting
erroneous criticisms leveled against the historical accuracy of the Pentateuch by adherents of the
Documentary School. Each of these ill-founded allegations is followed by a list of archaeological
data tending to refute it. No attempt is made to discuss these various discoveries in detail, but a
brief summary is given of their importance relative to the allegation concerned.

Ill-Founded Allegations

ALLEGATION: The art of writing was virtually unknown in Israel prior to the establishment of
the Davidic monarchy; therefore there could have been no written records going back to the time
of Moses.
REFUTATION: (1) The earliest Hebrew document thus far discovered is the Gezer Calendar,
written about 925 B.C. (found by Macalister in the 1900s). But since it is obviously a mere
schoolboy’s exercise, it demonstrates that the art of writing was so well known and widely
practiced in Israel during the tenth century that even the children were being taught this skill in
the provinces.
(2) The Ugaritic or Ras Shamra Tablets (discovered by Schaeffer in 1929) date from about 1400
B.C. They are written in a thirty-letter alphabet and couched in a language more closely related to
Hebrew than to any other known Semitic dialect. They principally consist of religious epic
poetry referring to such deities as El, Baal, Anath, Asherat, and Mot, and exhibit the depraved
polytheism which characterized the Canaanites at the time of the Israelite conquest. As already
pointed out in chapter 12, they feature several cultic terms which were falsely alleged by
Wellhausen to be postexilic P inventions. This surely establishes the fact that these technical
terms for sacrifice were the common property of the whole Canaanite area nearly a thousand
years before they were supposed to have arisen according to the Documentary Hypothesis. They
also furnish many parallels to poetic cliches and characteristic expressions found both in the
poetic portions of the Pentateuch and in the Psalms. They refer to Baal’s home as being situated
“on the mountain of his inheritance,” which comes very close to Ex. 15:17 with its phrase, “the
mountain of thine inheritance” (understood by the critics as a reference to Mount Zion, and
therefore post-Davidic). Even some of the poetic forms and parallelisms in these Ugaritic epics
show a close resemblance to Hebrew poetry. Compare, for example, the tricolonic parallelism
used in the song of Miriam (Ex. 15:7, 8) and in some of the Psalms (e.g., Ps. 92:9), which
reflects a style characteristic of the Ugaritic poems. Some of the rare and dubious words of the
Hebrew poetry occur also in the Ras Shamra documents, which have therefore shed light upon
their meaning. (Cf. Albright, AP, pp. 231–33.)
(3) Even earlier than the Ras Shamra literature was the assortment of alphabetic inscriptions
found at the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadim (the ancient Dophkah), dating from 1500 B.C.
at the very latest. These hieroglyphic inscriptions (discovered by Petrie in 1904) exhibit an
alphabetic system which furnishes the ancestry for the letters of the Phoenician alphabet.
Obviously the authors of these inscriptions were Semitic miners in the employ of Egypt. The
natural inference is that already by that time writing was so widely diffused among the Semites
of the pre-Mosaic age that even the lowest classes of society could read and write. (Some have
suggested that these were Hyksos slaves, as Albright conjectures, who were compelled to work
in these mines after they were expelled from Egypt.) It is interesting to observe that more
recently potsherds have been discovered at Hazor inscribed in this same Sinaitic script (Y.
Yadin, et al.: Hazor I [1958], Hazor II [1960]), which suggests that the knowledge of writing in
this alphabetic script was extended throughout Palestine in Moses’ time.
ALLEGATTON: The Genesis accounts of the career of Abraham and his descendants are
untrustworthy and often unhistorical. Noldeke even went so far as to deny the historical
existence of Abraham altogether.
REFUTATION: The twentieth century has brought abundant confirmation of the biblical record
through the following archaeological discoveries.
(1) The city of Ur in Southern Sumeria was thoroughly excavated by Leonard Woolley (1922–
1934), and it proved to be a large and flourishing city which enjoyed an advanced civilization
around 2000 B.C., which would have been precisely Abraham’s period. The average middle-class
citizens lived in well-appointed houses containing from ten to twenty rooms. Schools were
maintained for the education of the young, for schoolboy tablets have been discovered which
attest their training in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion (Free, ABH, pp. 49–50). There
has been some question in recent years as to whether it was the Sumerian Ur that was referred to,
but the evidence for a more northerly city of the same name is still meager, and at any rate could
not have been called “Ur of the Chaldees” (UR KASDÎM).
(2) The name Abram has been discovered in tablets dating from the sixteenth century B.C. Thus,
an Akkadian tablet dated 1554 B.C., or the eleventh year of Amisadugga of Babylon (Barton, AB,
p. 344), records the hiring of an ox by a farmer named Abarama. Two other tablets refer to this
same man as Abamrama.
(3) As for Abraham’s career in Palestine, the excavations at Shechem and Bethel show that they
were inhabited in Abraham’s time. A ninth-century writer might well have represented the
patriarch as stopping at cities which were not standing in the twentieth century B.C., although
they may have become famous later.
(4) The older scholars criticized Gen. 13 as unhistorical, on the ground that the Jordan valley was
relatively uninhabited in Abraham’s time. But Nelson Glueck has in recent decades uncovered
more than seventy sites in the Jordan valley, some of them as ancient as 3000 B.C.
(5) Genesis 14 was rejected by Noldeke on the grounds that (a) the names of the Mesopotamian
kings were fictional, (b) there was no such extensive travel from Mesopotamia to Palestine in
Abraham’s day, and (c) there was no such line of march east of the Jordan River. But as to (a)
the likelihood of a Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, more recent discovery has shown that an
Elamite dynasty did indeed establish a temporary over-lordship in Sumer and Akkad, and that
some of these kings had names beginning with “Kudur” (“servant”), and that there was an
Elamite goddess named Lagamar. Thus, a king Kudur-lagamar may well have participated in this
invasion. It is stated in one tablet (Barton, AB, p. 349) that a king named Kudur-Mabug had a
son named Eri-aku (or else his name could be read Arad-Sin, “Servant of the moon-god”), and
that he was king of Larsa—very close to “Arioch king of Ellasar” (Gen. 14:1). The Mari Tablets
also attest the currency of the name Ariyuk. (So Albright in Rowley, OTMS, p. 6.) A Babylonian
wagon contract dating from a time shortly after Hammurabi stipulates that the wagon hired must
not be driven to the coast of the Mediterranean (indicating that wagons could indeed be driven to
Palestine in those days). (Cf. Barton, AB, p. 347.)
The net result of all this archaeological confirmation of the agreement of Gen. 14 with conditions
existing in that period has been to convince Gunkel, Albright, and many others, that this episode
rests upon authentic tradition perhaps going back to the twentieth century B.C. Albright
concludes, “In spite of our failure hitherto to fix the historical horizon of this chapter, we may be
certain that its contents are very ancient. There are several words and expressions found nowhere
else in the Bible and now known to belong to the second millennium. The names of the towns in
Transjordania are also known to be very ancient.” It should be pointed out, however, that the
earlier identification of “Amraphel king of Shinar” with the celebrated Hammurabi of Babylon is
now no longer tenable, for it is now known that he lived in the eighteenth century, whereas
Abraham belonged to the twentieth or twenty-first century (according to the biblical record).
This revised date for Hammurabi’s reign (ca. 1792–1750 B.C., according to Rowton) has been
established on the basis of diplomatic correspondence discovered at Mari between Zimri-Lim,
the last king of Mari, and Hammurabi himself. Since the time of Zimri-Lim has been fixed from
other synchronisms, the later date for the famous lawgiver seems firmly grounded.
(6) The Mari Tablets were discovered by Parrot at Tell Hariri on the middle Euphrates in 1933.
These twenty thousand tablets were written in Akkadian during the eighteenth century B.C., and
confirm the existence of the city of Nakhur (which could have been so named after Abraham’s
brother, Nahor, according to Gen. 24:10; cf. 11:27). They also refer to the name Ariyuk (Arioch)
as current in the early second millennium. They even mention the Habiru (which is probably the
Akkadian form of the Canaanite term ˓Iḇrɩ̂ ʸm or Hebrew), a designation first applied to Abraham
in the Genesis record, but which from the cuneiform evidence, seems to have referred to certain
groups of warlike “wanderers” or “people from the other side” (based on the assumption that the
root of the name was derived from the verb ˓ābar, “cross over, pass through”), who may or may
not have been ethnically related to each other. It is interesting to note that one of the names
occurring in these documents from Mari is Banu-Yamina (note the similarity to Benjamin), a
tribe of fierce nomads. The early occurrence of this word gives a background for its appearance
in later Hebrew history.
(7) The Nuzu or Nuzi Tablets, found by Chiera and Speiser at Nuzi (near Kirkuk) on the Tigris
in 1925, date from the fifteenth century, and betray a strong, Hurrian influence in the type of
Akkadian used in the several thousand tablets discovered. They serve to confirm the historicity
of many of the customs and usages practiced by Abraham and the other patriarchs prior to the
Egyptian sojourn. (a) Abraham’s reference to his servant Eliezer as “son of his house” in Gen.
15:2 (prior to the birth of Ishmael and Isaac) indicated that he had adopted him as his legal heir.
God’s rejection of this arrangement (Gen. 15:4) might have occasioned Abraham embarrassment
had it not been customary (as Nuzi texts show) to set aside the claims of an adopted son if a
natural heir was subsequently born into the family. (b) The legitimacy of selling one’s birthright
(as Esau sold his to Jacob in Gen. 25:33) was established at Nuzi, for in one case an older brother
was validly recompensed by a payment of three sheep for selling to his younger brother the
rights of primogeniture. (c) The binding character of a deathbed will, such as was elicited from
Isaac by Jacob, is attested by a case where a man named Tarmiya established his right to a
woman he had married by proving that his father on his deathbed orally bestowed her on him.
This was sufficient to win the lawsuit brought against him by his brothers. (d) A plausible motive
for Rachel’s theft of her father’s teraphim (Gen. 31) is supplied by a Nuzi record of a case where
a man was able in court to claim the estate of his father-in-law because he possessed the family
teraphim (or household gods). H. H. Rowley comes to this conclusion regarding the patriarchal
narratives in Genesis; “Their accurate reflection of social conditions in the patriarchal age and in
some parts of the Mesopotamia from which the patriarchs are said to have come, many centuries
before the present documents were composed, is striking.”
(8) The Hittite Legal Code (discovered by Winckler at Hattusas or Boghaz-koy 1906–1912 and
dating from about 1300 B.C.) illuminates the transaction recorded in Gen. 23 where Abraham
purchased the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite. Hittite law explains the reluctance of
Abraham to buy the entire parcel, and his preference for acquiring only the cave itself and the
territory immediately adjacent. The law required the owner of an entire tract to perform the
duties of ilku or feudal service, a responsibility which doubtless included pagan religious
observances. As a Jehovah-worshiper, Abraham was alert enough to prefer avoiding this
involvement by purchasing only a fraction of the parcel, thus leaving Ephron responsible to
perform ilku as original owner of the tract. As Manfred Lehmann brings out, the account in Gen.
23 exhibits such an intimate knowledge of Hittite procedure as to make it certain that the episode
antedated the destruction of the Hittite power in the thirteenth century B.C.
(9) It was the contention of many archaeologists, Albright included, that the references to camels
as included in Abraham’s holdings in livestock (Gen. 12:16) and as employed by his servant who
conducted the courtship of Rebekah (Gen. 24:10, 14, 19–20) were anachronistic embellishments
coming from later centuries. Likewise the mention of camels as employed by the slave traders
who purchased Joseph on their way down to Egypt (Gen. 37:25). This deduction was drawn from
a lack of clear extrabiblical reference to camels prior to the twelfth century in any of the
archaeological discoveries made before 1950. But like so many arguments from silence, this
contention must be abandoned as discredited by subsequent findings. Kenneth Kitchen points out
(AOOT, p. 79) that even apart from a probable (but disputed) eighteenth-century allusion to
camels in a fodder list from Tell Atshana (as attested by W. G. Lambert in BASOR, no. 160
[Dec. 1960]: 42–43), there is undoubtedly a reference to the domestication of camels in some of
the lexical lists from the Old Babylonian period (2000–1700 B.C.). An early Sumerian text from
Nippur alludes to camel’s milk (cf. Chicago Assyrian Dictionary [1960]: 7:2b). Back in the
twenty-fifth century B.C., the bones of a camel were interred under a house at Mari (Andre
Parrot, in Syria 32 [1955]: 323). Similar discoveries have been made in Palestinian sites in levels
dating from 2000 B.C. onward. From Byblos in Phoenicia comes an incomplete camel figurine
dating from the nineteenth or eighteenth century (Roland de Vaux, in Revue Biblique, 56 [1949]:
9). More recent discovery has further shown this negative judgment to be unjustified. (Cf. R. J.
Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, vol. 2 [Brill, 1965], chap. 4, pp. 194–213; “The Coming
of the Camel,” p. 197). Forbes cites an early Dynastic limestone vessel shaped like a recumbent
pack camel; also discovered are pottery camels’ heads from Hierakonpolis and Abydos in the
Egyptian First Dynasty (p. 198). Also included is a figurine of a recumbent camel at Byblos
during the Middle Kingdom Period (p. 203). Oppenheim found at Gozan (Tell Halaf) an
orthostat of an armed camel rider which was dated 3000 B.C. or at least early 3rd millennium. A
small camel figurine discovered at Megiddo closely resembles Dynasty I types. Middle Kingdom
camel bones were found at Gezer (p. 209). The Akkadian term for male camel,
˓ibulu/udra/uduru; for female camel, udrate; for dromedary, gammalu: (E-G v:116.10) in Coptic
(jamūl). (The Sumerian term was ANŠE A-ABBA: “an ass of the sea-lands or dromedary”). Once
again the Old Testament record has been vindicated as a completely trustworthy and historical
account, despite the temporary lack of archaeological confirmation.
ALLEGATION: The legislation of the Priestly Code represents a late, post-exilic stage in the
development of Israel’s religion; laws of this sort could never have been devised until the fifth
century B.C.
REFUTATION: (1) The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (C. H.), discovered by de Morgan and
Scheil at Susa in 1901, shows numerous similarities to the provisions in Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers, relative to the punishment of crimes and the imposition of damages for torts and
breaches of contract. Many of these similar laws are included by Wellhausen in document P.
Generally speaking, the resemblances are found in the Israelite mišpāṭɩ̂ m (civil laws of customary
origin, generally having an “if—then—” type of structure). For example, (a) Lev. 19:23–25
provides that after an orchard is planted, the cultivator of it may not eat of its fruit until the fifth
year. Code of Hammurabi #60 stipulates that the tenant farmer who has planted an orchard may
not eat of its fruit until the fifth year (at which time he must let the owner of the property take the
better half of the crop). (b) Leviticus 20:10 provides the death penalty for both the adulterer and
the adulteress. C. H. #129 provides that both parties to adultery are to be drowned, unless a
pardon is secured from the king, or unless the wife is pardoned by her husband. (c) Numbers
5:11–28 describes a procedure for determining the guilt or innocence of a wife who has been
suspected by her husband of infidelity: she is to drink a potion of “bitter water” upon which a
curse has been invoked if she is guilty. C. H. #132 provides that a wife suspected of adultery
(although not apprehended in the act) shall be cast into the river to see whether she will sink (if
guilty) or float (if innocent). (d) Leviticus 20:12 requires the death penalty for both parties when
a man commits adultery with his daughter-in-law. C. H. #155 exacts capital punishment only of
the father-in-law in such a case, presumably on the ground that the woman would not dare to
refuse the head of the household. (e) Leviticus 24:19–20 fixes the damages for mayhem as the
same injury to be inflicted on the offender (an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth). C. H. #196, 197,
200 all require the same penalty where both parties are of the same social class, but only
monetary damages where the injured party is of a lower class.
The resemblances are so striking as to demonstrate that laws of the P type are by no means too
advanced for the age of Moses, since they found a fairly close correspondence with the legal
systems prevailing in Babylonia centuries before his time. It can hardly be objected that the
Israelites were too primitive to be governed by laws such as these back in Moses’ time, since
according to their own explicit record they had been living in the midst of one of the most
advanced civilizations of ancient times for over four hundred years, and would naturally have
entertained more advanced concepts of jurisprudence than tribes indigenous to the desert. It
might be expected that Egyptian regulations would have exerted a more profound influence upon
the Hebrew code than did the Babylonian (which could only have survived as an oral tradition
from Abrahamic days). But since no law codes have ever yet been discovered in Egypt
(Pritchard, ANET, p. 212), it is impossible to assess the Egyptian element one way or the other.
It should be understood, of course, that the differences between the Torah and the Code of
Hammurabi are far more striking than the resemblances. But the differences proceed largely
from the entirely different religious ideology to which each of the two cultures adhered.
Most numerous, however, are the resemblances between the Babylonian code and the Book of
the Covenant contained in Ex. 21–23. Compare, for example, Ex. 21:2–11 with C. H. #117 (poor
debtors are to be bondslaves for three years and released on the fourth year); Ex. 21:15 with #195
(If a son has struck his father, his hand shall be cut off. They shall cut off his hand); Ex. 21:16
with #14 (If an awēlum has stolen the young son of another awēlum, he shall be put to death);
Ex. 21:22–25 with #209–213; Ex. 21:28–36 with #250–252; Ex. 22:7–9 with #120; Ex. 22:9 with
#267; Ex. 23:1–3 with #1–4. This evidence of course establishes the possibility of a Mosaic date
for these regulations, rather than the 800 B.C. period assigned to them by the Documentary
School. The same is true of those provisions which show an affinity to the Deuteronomic
legislation (Deut. 19:16–21 and #1; Deut. 22:23–27 and #130), which is not a mere restatement
of laws in Exodus through Numbers. The legislation of eighteenth-century Babylon establishes
the possible antiquity of these allegedly Josianic (seventh century) provisions of document D.
(2) The fifteenth-century Ras Shamra Tablets, as before pointed out, furnish a goodly number of
technical terms for sacrifice which Wellhausen had declared to be of fifth-century origin
(offering made by fire, peace offering, sin offering, trespass offering, and possibly even tenūpah,
heave offering—cf. Koehler-Baumgartner, p. 1034a). In addition to cultic terms we find mention
of the rite of boiling a kid in its mother’s milk as an acceptable way to approach a god (Gordon,
Text 52:14). This gives point to the prohibition of this superstitious heathen practice in Ex.
23:19; 34:26; and Deut. 14:21.
Concerning this whole question of the late date assigned by critics to the Mosaic legislation,
Millar Burrows of Yale had this to say: “Scholars have sometimes supposed that the social and
moral level of the laws attributed to Moses was too high for such an early age. The standards
represented by the ancient law codes of the Babylonians, Assyrians and Hittites, as well as the
high ideals found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the early wisdom literature of the
Egyptians, have effectively refuted this assumption.”
Another important line of evidence has been found in the remarkable analogy between the
structure of second-millennium suzerainty treaties and the structure of Deuteronomy, and legal
portions of Exodus as well. (For more specific details, see chap. 18 on Deuteronomy.) Albright
states that this presentation of the Covenant undertaking between Yahweh and Israel “preserves a
clear pattern which in no fewer than eight distinct points reflects the characteristic structures of
Syro-Anatolian treaties of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C., which had been preserved in the
Hittite archives at Boghazkoy. The structure of half a dozen Assyrian, Aramaic and Phoenician
treaties which we know from the 8th cent. B.C. and later is quite different.”
ALLEGATION: The whole account of the Hebrew conquest of Transjordan and Palestine as
recorded in Numbers and Joshua is grossly unhistorical and out of harmony with conditions
prevailing in the late second millennium.

MAJOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERIODS

Archaeological Period Dates Biblical Period

Pottery 5000 B.C. Pre-Abraham

Chalcolithic 4000–3200 B.C. Pre-Abraham

Early Bronze 3200–2100 B.C. Pre-Abraham

Middle Bronze 2100–1500 B.C. Abraham to Moses

Late Bronze 1500–1200 B.C. Moses to Judges

 Iron Age I 1200–970 B.C. Judges to Solomon

Iron Age II 970–600 B.C. Divided Kingdom

Iron Age III 600–330 B.C. To the end of the Old

Testament

Hellenistic I 330–165 B.C. Inter-testamental

Hellenistic II 165–63 B.C. Inter-testamental

(Maccabean)

Roman 63 B.C.–A.D. 330 New Testament

* There is substantial debate regarding the dating of LB and IAI. For a full discussion cf. J.
J. Bimson, Redating the Exodus and Conquest, JSOT, Sheffield, Almond Press, 1978.

REFUTATION: (1) The Egyptian Execration Texts of the Twelfth Dynasty serve to confirm the
historicity of the political situation in Palestine as portrayed in the Pentateuch and in Joshua.
These consist of two groups: a collection of inscribed bowls found by Sethe in 1926 (now in the
Berlin Museum) dating from about 1920 B.C.; and a group of inscribed statuettes found by
Posener in 1940 (now in the Brussels Museum) dating from about 1820 B.C. These objects were
inscribed with the names of tributary cities and states in Palestine which were bound by oath to
be loyal to Egypt. Their apparent purpose was voodooistic; that is, if the people represented by
these names should violate their oaths, the jars or statuettes were to be smashed, so as to bring a
curse upon the rebels themselves. The significant factor is that the inscriptions in the second
group indicate a perceptible decrease in the number of tribal units and an increase in the number
of city-states in the land of Palestine—the situation reflected in the book of Joshua.
(2) The Tell el-Amarna Tablets, discovered at Tell el-Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) in 1887, and
dating from 1400–1370 B.C., consist of a file of correspondence written in Akkadian cuneiform
to the Egyptian court by Palestinian and Syrian princelings. These letters contain for the most
part alarming reports of the depredations of fierce invaders and urgent requests for Egyptian
troops to help repel these dangerous incursions. They also report a condition of chaotic disunity
among the various petty kings of Canaan, and a tendency to forsake their allegiance to Egypt in
favor of an alliance with the invading Håabiru˓apiru (as Albright and Mendenhall transcribe the
name). The towns mentioned by a correspondent from Megiddo as having fallen to the invaders
are all in the region of Arad in the south, which was the first territory invaded by the Israelites,
according to Num. 21:1–3. Other cities listed as already fallen are those recorded in Joshua as
having been captured early in the Israelite conquest: Gezer, Ashkelon, and Lachish. There are no
letters at all from Jericho, Beersheba, Bethel, or Gibeon, which were the first to fall before
Joshua’s troops. More details concerning the Amarna correspondence will be given in chapter
19, but from what has been already indicated it is safe to say that these tablets record the Hebrew
conquest of Canaan in 1400–1380 B.C. from the standpoint of the Canaanites themselves.
(3) The “Israel” Stela of King Merneptah, found by Petrie at Thebes in 1896, dates from 1229
B.C., and contains the only extant Egyptian reference to the Hebrew nation as “Israel.” In this
encomium of praise to the Egyptian king (son of Rameses the Great) a list of nations and
localities is given toward the close of the inscription, with the declaration that they were
conquered or pillaged by Merneptah’s irresistible troops. This list includes the land of the
Hittites, Canaan itself, Ashkelon in Philistia, Gezer near the Valley of Aijalon, Yanoam up at the
northern tip of Palestine (near Laish-Dan), Israel (with an ethnic determinative rather than a local
city determinative), and the land of the Horites. Obviously, if Merneptah found Israelites in
possession of portions of Palestine even up toward the northern frontier, the Israelite conquest
must already have taken place substantially before 1229 B.C.“ Since this Palestinian campaign is
dated in the fifth regnal year of Merneptah, he could not have been the pharaoh of the Exodus, as
the older exponents of the ”late date theory” used to maintain. (The only way to avoid this
conclusion is to allege, contrary to the Genesis record itself, that some Israelites never migrated
to Egypt with the rest of the family of Jacob.) It would obviously be difficult for Merneptah to
have been the pharaoh who permitted the Israelites to flee from Egypt, and then after their forty
years of wilderness wandering and several more years of conquest, to find them settled in
Palestine by his fifth year!
It is worthy of note that in recent years Cyrus Gordon has assembled impressive evidence from
comparative literature of the ancient Near East and early Greece to show that the basic criteria
for source division by the Wellhausen school are totally invalid for non-Israelite literature. Just
as the Homeric account of the shield of Achilles fashioned by Haephestus in the Iliad described
it as depicting on the surface various scenes of the activities of war and peace in ancient Hellenic
society, so also the author of the Pentateuch brought together a panorama of the varied aspects of
second millennium Hebrew society, war and peace, cultic regulations and civil or criminal law,
and all that made up the life of that people. There is absolutely no need of hypothecating a
different author to account for each of these varied elements. Gordon also points to the Standard
of Ur (a mosaic of lapis lazuli and shell inlaid in a wooden base ca. 2500 B.C.); this likewise
furnished a comprehensive view of Sumerian life, illustrated by themes of war and peace. (Cf.
Gordon, “The Minoan Bridge,” in Christianity Today [March 15, 1963], p. 6; R. K. Harrison,
Old Testament Times, pp. 41, 50.)
Many other archaeological discoveries tending to verify the accuracy of the biblical record will
be described in subsequent chapters, in which their evidence bears upon special details relevant
to particular books in the Old Testament. It is because of the cumulative impact of all these
findings that archaeologists like W. E Albright have felt constrained to concede the essential
accuracy of the Pentateuch. Albright puts it this way: “The contents of our Pentateuch are, in
general, very much older than the date at which they were finally edited; new discoveries
continue to confirm the historical accuracy or the literary antiquity of detail after detail in it.… It
is, accordingly, sheer hypercriticism to deny the substantially Mosaic character of the
Pentateuchal tradition” (AP, p. 224). In an earlier article (“Archaeology Confronts Biblical
Criticism”) he affirmed that the assumption that pious fraud and pseudepigraphy were common
in Israel “is without parallel in the pre-Hellenistic Orient.” On the contrary, he states, we find
there a superstitious veneration for both written word and oral tradition.

Discoveries at Ebla
In 1964 an archaeological expedition was launched by the University of Rome to examine a
prominent hill, located about 44 miles south of Aleppo, known as Tell Mardikh, (under the
leadership of Paolo Matthiae). It turned out to have been occupied as early as 3500 B.C. It was
not definitely identified as the city of Ebla (mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi) until the
discovery of a dedication of a statue to “King Ibbit-Lim, king of Ebla.” This exciting discovery
led to intensified excavation that yielded to the investigators an entire library in 1974. The first
portion of this library consisted of 42 tablets in Akkadian cuneiform discovered on a palace floor
located on the acropolis. In the following year 14,000 more tablets or tablet fragments were
unearthed, many of them still arranged in library order, even though they had fallen to the floor
after their wooden shelves were consumed by fire. Apparently the city was stormed and put to
the torch in the reign of Naram Sin, king of Akkad, in 2250 B.C.
It was at this juncture that Giovanni Pettinato, a foremost Sumerologist, was summoned to
analyze and translate this immense collection of cuneiform tablets dating back to centuries
before the birth of Abraham (the earliest of them dated as early as 2500 B.C.). Pettinato soon
made the astonishing discovery that certain of the documents were finished off not only by the
customary Sumerian formula of dub-gar (“tablet written”), but others by a senseless pair of signs
reading gal-balag, which could also be read as ik-tub. Read like this it meant “he wrote” in a
language neither Sumerian nor Akkadian, but quite evidently using the verb kataba, which is
extensively employed in Arabic, Phoenician, Ugaritic, and Hebrew meaning “wrote.” Since the
morphology of the verb was similar to Akkadian (a so-called iprus form), it appeared that the
native inhabitants actually spoke a tongue having morphological similarities to Akkadian, but
with a vocabulary very definitely Canaanite. This was abundantly confirmed when a large
number of lexical texts were brought to light. These consisted of lists of words in Sumerian
which were paired with the Eblaite equivalents. This demonstrated that written records were kept
in this portion of Syria by a people who spoke a language closely related to Canaanite, even
though using a verbal morphology closer to Akkadian. It would appear to have been a dialect
spoken by Amorites or some closely related ethnic group, having a greater affinity to Canaanite
than to Aramaic, which was apparently the predominating tongue at Padan-Aram back in
Laban’s time (cf. Gen. 31:47). Amazingly enough, many of the names of kings and leading men
in Ebla bore a remarkable resemblance to names that were later used by the Hebrews themselves.
Among these were Ibrium (biblical Eber), Ish-ma-il (Ishmael), Ish-ra-il (Israel), Na-khur (Nahor)
and Mi-ka-il (Michael). Commercial and political relations were maintained with cities like Dor,
Hazor, Megiddo, Shalem (Jerusalem), Gaza, and Ashtaroth (cf. Ashtaroth-Qarnaim).
City I dated back to 3500 B.C., but its greatest prosperity occurred in the period of City II, datable
to 2400–2250 B.C., under the leadership of kings like Igrish-Halam, Irkab-Damu, Ar-Ennum (a
contemporary of King Sargon of Agade), Ebrium, Ibbi-Sippish and Dubaha-Ada (who had the
misfortune of being conquered by Naram-Sin of Agade, who plundered Ebla in 2250 and put it
to the torch. It was not long before Ebla was rebuilt after this catastrophe, about 2000 B.C. (City
III), but it never regained its former power, and was eventually sacked by the Hittites in 1600
B.C., about the same time that they pillaged Babylon itself.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES TO THE OLD TESTAMENT

 EVIDENCE DATES CULTURE SIGNIFICANCE

EBLA 2350–1600 B.C. EBLAIC SUMERIAN EARLY ADVANCED

CIVILIZATION &
WRITTEN LANGUAGE—
LARGE LIBRARY

CITY OF UR (DYNASTY 2000 B.C. SUMERIAN EARLY ADVANCED

III) CIVILIZATION

CODE OF HAMMURABI 1700 B.C. (ROWTON) AKKADIAN PARALLELS MOSAIC

CODE

EGYPTIAN EXECRATION 1900 B.C. EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN CLAIMS TO

TEXTS OF DYNASTY XII HIEROGLYPHIC SOVEREIGNTY OVER
CANAANITE CITIES

MARI TABLETS 1700 B.C. HURRIAN DOCUMENTATION OF

NAKHUR, HABIRU;
PATRIARCHAL CUSTOMS

INSCRIPTIONS FROM 1500 B.C. PROTO-PHOENICIAN EARLY PICTOGRAPHIC

TURQUOISE MINES OF ALPHABETIC
SERABIT EL-KHADIM

RAS SHAMRA TABLETS 1400 B.C. UGARITIC EPIC POETRY STYLES

EARLY SACRIFICIAL
TERMS

NUZI TABLETS 1400 B.C. HURRIAN CONFIRM HISTORICITY

OF PATRIARCHAL
CUSTOMS IN GENESIS

HITTITE LEGAL CODE 1300 B.C. HITTITE PATRIARCHAL

SUZERAINTY TREATY;
PATRIARCHAL
CUSTOMS

TELL EL-AMARNA 1400 B.C. AKKADIAN CUNEIFORM REFERENCES TO

TABLETS HEBREW CONQUEST OF
CANAAN

MERNEPTAH STELA 1220 B.C. EGYPTIAN MENTION OF THE NAME

“ISRAEL”
GEZER CALENDAR 925 B.C. HEBREW WRITING PREVALENT

BLACK OBELISK OF 840 B.C. AKKADIAN CONFIRMATION OF

SHALMANESER III ISRAEL’S KING JEHU

MOABITE STONE 840 B.C. MOABITE HISTORICITY OF 2

KINGS 3 AND OMRI

SILOAM INSCRIPTION 702 B.C. HEBREW HEZEKIAH’S WATER

DIVERSION TUNNEL

SARGON’S INSCRIPTION 720 B.C. AKKADIAN SARGON’S VICTORY

OVER SAMARIA

NEO-BABYLONIAN 600 B.C. AKKADIAN RECORD OF

CHRONICLE NEBUCHADNEZZER’S
INVASION OF
PALESTINE

ELEPHANTINE PAPYRI 420 B.C. ARAMAIC IMPERIAL ARAMAIC OF

THE TIME OF DANIEL &
EZRA

TAYLER PRISM OF 685 B.C. AKKADIAN SENNECHERIB’S

SENNACHERIB ADVANCE AGAINST
JUDAH IN 701

LACHISH OSTRACA CA. 588 B.C. HEBREW CHALDEAN INVASION

OF JUDAH

NABONIDUS 550 B.C. NEO-BABYLONIAN RECORDS BELSHAZZAR

CHRONICLE AKKADIAN AS SECONDARY RULER
OF BABYLON

BEHISTUN ROCK 500 B.C. OLD PERSIAN, NON-BIBLICAL

ELAMITE, AKKADIAN REFERENCE TO PERSIAN
CONQUEST OF
BABYLON UNDER
DARIUS

CYRUS CYLINDER 500 B.C. OLD PERSIAN CYRUS’S VICTORY AND

DECREE PERMITTING
FREEDOM OF WORSHIP
Among the cities with which Ebla maintained trade relations were Si-da-mu-ki (apparently
Sodom) or Sa-dam-ki, and Sa-bi-im (equivalent to Zeboiim). This is attested in Pettinato’s
Archives of Ebla (Doubleday, 1981, p. 287). These two cities of the Pentapolis of the Plain,
where Lot made his home prior to the destruction meted out by the Lord according to Gen. 19,
were formerly dismissed by Wellhausen and the Documentarians as merely legendary rather than
historical. Therefore their attestation by contemporary records going back to the time of
Abraham comes as another refutation of the skepticism of the Wellhausen School of scholarship.
Additional information about the Ebla Tablets may be found in Excursus 2 in the latter part of
this book.

PART TWO
Special Introduction

14
Genesis
THE TITLE Genesis (“beginning,” Greek) was applied to this book by the Septuagint. The
Hebrew title consists of the first word or two in the book, berē˒šɩ̂ t (“in the beginning”). The main
theme or subject matter consists of origins: the origin of the created world, of the human race, of
the various nations of earth, and then particularly of the covenant family which composes the
redeemed people of God.
As for the authorship of the book, it contains no explicit record as to who composed it.
According to tradition, however, the author was Moses himself, and a specific ordinance like
circumcision on the eighth day, which is first introduced and explained in Gen. 17:12 (as well as
in Ex. 12:48 and Lev. 12:3), is referred to in the New Testament (John 7:23) as part of the law of
Moses. In support of this tradition is the circumstance that precisely the information needed to
make the book of Exodus intelligible is supplied by the book of Genesis. It is in Genesis that the
promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are spelled out, the promises so frequently referred to in
the other books of the Torah as being fulfilled by the momentous events of the Exodus and the
Conquest of Canaan. Moreover, the fact that Ex. 1:1 begins with the word and (Hebrew)
suggests that it was intended to follow some preceding book.
An additional consideration is found in the requirements of the situation confronting Moses as he
sought to write out a constitution for the theocracy of Jehovah shortly to be established in the
Promised Land. It was absolutely essential to national unity for the Israelite people to have an
accurate record of their own national origin in Abraham and God’s covenantal dealing with him
and his seed. While materials which the author used for the composition of this book no doubt
came to him from five to six centuries before his time, prior to Jacob’s migration into Egypt,
nevertheless Moses seems to have served as a Spirit-guided compiler and interpreter of the pre-
existent material which had come to him from his forebears in oral and written form.

Outline of Genesis

I. Beginning of Mankind, 1:1–11:32

A. Creation of the world, 1:1–2:3
B. Place of man in the world, 2:4–25
C. Entry of sin and the resultant fall, 3:1–4:26 (Covenant of grace instituted)
D. Antediluvian races and patriarchs (Adam to Noah), 5:1–32
E. Sinfulness of the world purged by the flood, 6:1–9:29
F. Posterity of Noah and the early races of the Near East, 10:1–11:32
II. Life of Abraham, 12:1–25:18
A. Abram’s call, and his acceptance of the covenant by faith, 12:1–14:24
B. Renewal and confirmation of the covenant, 15:1–17:27
C. Deliverance of Lot from Sodom, 18:1–19:38
D. Abraham and Abimelech, 20:1–18
E. Birth and marriage of Isaac, the son of promise. 21:1–24:67
F. Posterity of Abraham, 25:1–18
III. Life of Isaac and his family, 25:19–26:35
A. Birth of Esau and Jacob, 25:19–28
B. Sale of Esau’s birthright to Jacob, 25:29–34
C. Isaac and Abimelech II, 26:1–16
D. Dispute at Beersheba, 26:17–33
E. Esau’s marriages, 26:34–35
IV. Life of Jacob, 27:1–37:1
A. Jacob in his father’s home, 27:1–46
B. Jacob’s exile and journey, 28:1–22
C. Jacob with Laban in Syria, 29:1–33:15
D. Jacob’s return to the promised land, 33:16–35:20
E. Posterity of Jacob and Esau, 35:21–37:1
V. Life of Joseph, 37:2–50:26
A. Joseph’s boyhood, 37:2–36
B. Judah and Tamar, 38:1–30
C. Joseph’s promotion in Egypt, 39:1–41:57
D. Joseph and his brothers, 42:1–45:15
E. Joseph’s reception of Jacob in Egypt, 45:16–47:26
 F. Jacob’s last days and final prophecies, 47:27–50:14
G. Joseph’s assurance to his brothers of complete forgiveness, 50:15–26

It will be observed from this outline how carefully and systematically the entire patriarchal
period has been dealt with by the author of Genesis. The guiding principle throughout the
narrative is the covenant of grace, and God’s gracious dealings with true believers from the time
of Adam onward. First there is the selective process whereby the covenant fellowship is
narrowed down by stages to a single individual, Abraham; then the elective principle widens to
include a large family, that of Jacob. Thus the stage is set for the nurturing of an entire nation in
the favored refuge of Goshen in Egypt.
Two considerations reinforce this impression of single authorship in Genesis. The first is the
significant use of the term tôledôt (“generations, offspring, descendants”) to introduce most of
the main sections indicated in the outline above. Thus, it occurs at 2:4; 5:1; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27;
25:12; 36:1. Usually what follows tôledôt is a genealogical list, although it may be a review of
the development of that which has already been originated (as in the case of 2:4: “These are the
generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created”). In this last passage, it
should be emphasized that tôledôt nearly always prefaces a list or account which is about to
follow; it hardly serves as a terminal postscript to a list or account which has just been given.
This means (as Aalders, SIP, p. 44, and Moeller, GATE, p. 15, point out) that the assignment of
Gen. 2:4a to “P” (whose creation account has just been given in Gen. 1) is not justified according
to the usage of this term tôledôt in other passages. It could well serve as an introduction to the
account of Adam and Eve in Eden, which is given in the rest of Gen. 2 (a J passage).
The second unitary consideration is found in the technique of the author in dealing with ancestral
figures who are not of the chosen line. Moeller (GATE, p. 15) points out that Cain’s genealogy
(4:17–24) is given before that of Seth (4:25–26); those of Japheth and Ham (10:1–4 and 10:6–8)
are given before that of Shem (10:21–22), even though Ham was presumably the youngest of the
three brothers. The genealogies of Lot (19:29–30) and Ishmael (25:12–15) appear before that of
Isaac (25:19). So also Esau’s descendants (36:1–10) are listed before those of Jacob (37:2). The
author’s motive in each case seems to dispose more briefly of the non-elect branches of the
human line before taking up the genealogy of those patriarchs who had a genuine faith in
Jehovah. Such systematic treatment hardly accords with a theory of heterogeneous and
awkwardly combined sources posited by the Wellhausen theory.
Contrary to earlier experts, who regarded the Genesis account as derived from pagan sources,
Heidel, Lambert and Millard reject the idea that Gen. 1–2 had any close relation at all to the
Babylonian Enuma Elish (K. A. Kitchen, The Bible and Archaeology, p. 27). Enuma Elish
assumes the eternity of pre-existent matter out of which arose a pair of creator gods by forces
that are not explained, which somehow began the creative process. This really doesn’t deal with
the question of how creation did take place. If we have primeval matter, which is obviously
destructible through nuclear fission, it is difficult to believe it was there from the very beginning
or even before any beginning. Furthermore, matter has been found to possess a very elaborate
structure, with atomic components of intricate complexity. This can only be understood as the
product of intelligent design. To say that the creation epics of any of the ancient neighbors of
Israel had any bearing on the creation record as presented in the Old Testament is to miss the
whole point of the stark contrast between creation ex nihilo and the assumption of the eternity of
physical matter.
Only in the Bible does it state that God created everything ex nihilo. The pagan cultures imply
that there never was a time when matter did not exist. The conclusion that the material universe
was created by nothing or emerged from nothing is logically impossible and puts the atheist in a
position of total irrationality. As R. C. Sproul so adeptly states, “The modern view is far more
miraculous than the biblical view. It suggests that nothing created something. More than that, it
holds that nothing created everything—quite a feat indeed.

Genesis 1 and Modern Scientific Evidence

THE SIX CREATIVE DAYS AND THE AGE OF THE WORLD

From a superficial reading of Genesis 1, the impression would seem to be that the entire creative
process took place in six twenty-four-hour days. If this was the true intent of the Hebrew author
(a questionable deduction, as will be presently shown), this seems to run counter to modern
scientific research, which indicates that the planet Earth was created several billion years ago. In
the nineteenth century the chief evidence for this extreme antiquity (which was then, however,
computed to be far less than is the case today) was found in the rate at which sediment is
deposited by water action in modern times. In the Gulf of Mexico, sedimentary layers are
deposited at the rate of a few inches a year; yet, successive layers of deposit as thick as 28,000
feet have been found, thus indicating the passage of well over 100,000 years in time. This, of
course, is valid only upon a uniformitarian hypothesis, that is, that natural forces have been
operating through the processes of erosion, sedimentation, and magmatic (or volcanic) action in
just the same manner and at the same rate, throughout all preceding ages as they do now.
(Uniformitarianism has been vigorously challenged by many authorities on account of the
evidence of violent twisting and tilting and thermodynamic metamorphism exhibited in many
mountainous, or once mountainous, regions. The appearance of fossils, many of them left by
species of animals no longer surviving, in these sedimentary strata served as a sort of geological
time clock which strengthened the impression of a very great age for the earth. Most of the
fossils represented genera which had disappeared long before the more recent strata had been
deposited, and which therefore could not have been suddenly destroyed in a single catastrophe
such as Noah’s flood. (Especially the numerous fossil species of plant and animal living in the
sea would remain unaffected by the flood, unless of course the sudden intermingling of salt water
with fresh would account for their extinction.)
The more recently expanded knowledge of nuclear physics has brought into play another type of
evidence which seems to confirm the great antiquity of the earth, that is, the decay of radioactive
minerals. According to the calculations of physicists, uranium 238 over a period of four and one-
half billion years will decay through sixteen intermediate stages (thorium 234, etc.) to lead 206,
which is a stable mineral and will not further decompose through radioactivity. Rubidium 87
takes sixty billion years to decay into strontium 87. By computing the proportion of the
“daughter” product to the parent radioactive deposit it is possible to estimate the age of the
specimen in question, assuming the validity of the uniformitarian approach in geochronology.
The most recent geochronologists have perfected techniques which they think eliminate to a
large extent the possible factors of error (such as the presence of the “daughter” mineral at the
time when the radioactive isotope itself was deposited, or else the leaching out of portions of the
specimen by underground water action). They tend to use two or three different radioactive
isotopes when present in the same deposit, and thus can check the accuracy of the results
computed from each decayed specimen. Better known to the general public is the carbon 14
method. All plants and animals receive into their tissues a certain amount of carbon 14 (a product
of the decomposition of nitrogen under the impact of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere). After
the plant or animal dies, it can absorb no more of this carbon 14, and that which it already
contains in its system gradually breaks down by radioactivity to form nitrogen 14. This process
takes place rather quickly, however, over a period of only 5,580 years, and hence is quite useless
for any deposits 30,000 years old or older.
Can such an enormous time interval (five billion years or more, according to some estimates—
made, of course, on uniformitarian assumptions) be reconciled with the six creative days of
Genesis 1? This all depends upon the significance of the Hebrew word yôm (“day”). There are
three alternative theories currently advocated by biblical scholars concerning these “days.”
1. The word yôm represents a literal, twenty-four-hour day, and Gen. 1:3–2:3 gives us a record of
an exact week in which God completely restored from chaos a creation (recorded in Gen. 1:1)
which had suffered a cosmic catastrophe (possibly at the time Satan and his angels were cast out
of God’s presence). Support for this interpretation has assertedly been found in Isa. 45:18 where
God is stated not to have created the earth “void” (bōhû, Hebrew, being the same as the “void” of
Gen. 1:2). Therefore Genesis 1:1 must indicate a complete and perfect creation prior to the
chaotic state mentioned in Gen. 1:2, for this is the only possible deduction from Isa. 45:18 when
so interpreted. (Yet this interpretation encounters the difficulty that bōhû in v. 19 clearly means
“in vain.”) It should be noted in this connection that the verb “was” (hāyeṯâ in Gen. 1:2) may
quite possibly be rendered “became” and be thus construed to mean: “And the earth became
formless and void.” Only a cosmic catastrophe could account for the introduction of chaotic
confusion into the original perfection of God’s creation. This interpretation certainly seems to be
exegetically tenable, but it encounters at least two major difficulties. (a) It means that the whole
magnificent achievement of the original creation is dismissed with the bare statement in Gen.
1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” All attention is then devoted to a
reconstruction of a recently disturbed world order, and events that took place five or six thousand
years ago. (b) It means also that the inspired Book of Origins has nothing to say about the order
of the creative process, or indeed about anything that pertains to geology. There is no more any
need to harmonize geology and Genesis, for they deal—according to this interpretation—with
entirely different subject matter.
Perhaps it should be added that advocates of this theory have often embellished it with highly
questionable speculations concerning the original status of Satan as presiding over the worship of
Jehovah in a pre-catastrophe Eden beautified with gem-laden trees (equating the “prince of Tyre”
in Ezek. 28 with Satan himself. Jeremiah 4:23–26 has also been fitted into this catastrophe theory
on the ground that it contains the expression tōhû wabōhû (“without form and void”) found in
Gen. 1:2. So construed, it indicates that prior to the catastrophe there must have been cities and
men who were destroyed some time between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2 (even though Jer. 4:23–26
apparently sets forth a prophetic scene of a catastrophe which is yet to come).
2. Yôm represents a revelational day. That is, in six literal days (or possibly in a vision which
represented to Moses the whole drama of creation in six visionary days). God described to His
prophet the mystery of how He had brought creation into being, and the stages by which He did
so. These stages did not necessarily represent strictly chronological sequence (since the making
of the heavenly bodies is delayed until the fourth day, after the creation of vegetation which
requires sunlight to exist). They are only in part chronological, and in part topical. That is to say,
the various stages or phases of creation are introduced in a logical order, as they bear upon the
human observer living on the earth. It is therefore more logical to describe first the earth’s
surface upon which the observer must stand, before introducing the sun and moon which are to
shine upon the earth and regulate the seasons.
This interpretation is perhaps tenable without surrendering the inerrancy of the Bible record. But
it encounters several serious difficulties, chief among which is the complete absence of any hint
or suggestion in the text of Genesis 1 that a mere vision is being described. It reads like perfectly
straightforward history: In the beginning God created heaven and earth: on the first “day” He
created light; on the second day He separated the waters into the upper and the lower, and so on.
Second, it would seem highly improbable that it would require an entire twenty-four-hour period
to convey to Moses the three verses pertaining to the creation of light. Third, since the initial
creation spoken of in Gen. 1:1 is not apparently included in the first revelational “day,” the
question arises whether it was included in this supposed vision granted Moses, or whether this
was communicated in some nonvisionary manner. At any rate, if Genesis 1 was really only a
vision (representing, of course, the actual events of primeval history) then almost any other
apparently historical account in Scripture could be interpreted as a vision—especially if it relates
to transactions not naturally observable to a human investigator or historian.
3. Yôm represents a geologic age or stage in the creative process. This was the explanation
resorted to by nineteenth-century geologists who respected the authority of the Bible, notably J.
W. Dawson (e.g., The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science, 1877) and
James Dana (Manual of Geology, 1875). According to this view the term yôm does not
necessarily signify a literal twenty-four-hour day, but is simply equivalent to “stage.” It has often
been asserted that yôm could not bear this meaning, but could only have implied a literal day to
the Hebrew mind according to Hebrew usage. Nevertheless, on the basis of internal evidence, it
is this writer’s conviction that yôm in Gen. 1 could not have been intended by the Hebrew author
to mean a literal twenty-four-hour day.
In the first place, yôm is apparently used in Gen. 2:4 to refer to the whole creative process just
described in Gen. 1 as taking up six days: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth
in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven.” Since the stages in creating heaven and
earth have just been described, it is legitimate to infer that the “day” here must refer to the whole
process from day one through day six. In the second place, Gen. 1:27 states that after creating all
the land animals on the sixth day, God created man, both male and female. Then, in the more
detailed treatment of Gen. 2, we are told that God created Adam first, gave him the responsibility
of tending the Garden of Eden for some time until He observed him to be lonely. He then granted
him the fellowship of all the beasts and animals of earth, with opportunity to bestow names upon
them all. Some undetermined period after that, God observed that Adam was still lonely and
finally fashioned a human wife for him by means of a rib removed from him during a “deep
sleep.” Then at last he brought Eve before Adam and presented her to him as his new life partner.
Who can imagine that all of these transactions could possibly have taken place in 120 minutes of
the sixth day (or even within twenty-four hours, for that matter)? And yet Gen. 1:27 states that
both Adam and Eve were created at the very end of the final day of creation. Obviously the
“days” of chapter 1 are intended to represent stages of unspecified length, not literal twenty-four-
hour days.
As for the objection that the “days” of Gen. 1 are represented as consisting of an “evening” and a
“morning,” and therefore must be understood as literal, it may be replied that the formula
“evening and morning” serves only to indicate that the term day, albeit symbolical for a
geological stage, is used in the sense of a twenty-four-hour cycle rather than “day” in contrast to
“night” (as, for example, day is used in 1:5a). In this connection it should be pointed out the New
Testament references to Christ’s entombment as lasting “three days and three nights” are to be
explained as equivalent to “during a period of three twenty-four-hour days,” rather than implying
a literal three (daylight) days and three nights. In other words, Jesus died about 3:00 p.m. on
Friday (a portion of the first twenty-four-hour day), remained in the tomb on Saturday, and rose
early on Sunday (or during a third twenty-four-hour day). From the appearance of this expression
in Gen. 1, “the evening and the morning,” as the Hebrew way of indicating a twenty-four-hour
day, it was a logical procedure to speak of three such days as “three days and three nights.”
(Thus we avoid the difficulties encountered by those who hold to a Wednesday theory of the
crucifixion in the face of insurmountable evidence that it occurred on Friday.)
The day-age theory, then, accounts for the six creative days as indicating the broad outlines of
the creative work of God in fashioning the earth and its inhabitants up until the appearance of
Adam and Eve. Modern geologists agree with Genesis 1 in the following particulars: (a) The
earth began in a confused and chaotic form, which subsequently gave way to a more orderly
state. (b) The proper conditions for the maintenance of life were brought into being: the
separation of the thick vapor surrounding the earth into clouds above and rivers and seas below,
with the evaporation-precipitation cycle, and also with the increasing penetration of the sunlight
(for the previous creation of the sun is suggested by the first command: “Let there be light”) to
the surface of the earth. (c) The separation of land from sea (or the emergence of dry land above
the receding water level) preceded the appearance of life upon the soil. (d) Vegetable life had
already made its appearance before the first emergence of animal life in the Cambrian period. As
a matter of fact, all the invertebrate phyla appear contemporaneously with remarkable
suddenness in the Cambrian strata, with no indication in any of the pre-Cambrian deposits as to
how these various phyla, classes, and orders (represented by no less than 5,000 species) may
have developed. (e) Both Genesis and geology agree that the simpler forms appeared first and the
more complex later (f) Both agree that mankind appeared as the latest and highest product of the
creative process.
Thus in its broad outlines, the sequence set forth in the Hebrew account is in harmony with that
indicated by the data of geology. It is true that the mention of the fashioning of the sun, moon,
and stars on the fourth creative day does not correspond with the quite conclusive evidence that
the planet earth appeared subsequently to the creation of the sun. But inasmuch as the creation of
light on the first “day” indicates the priority of the sun even in the Mosaic account, we are to
understand on exegetical grounds that the emphasis on the fourth day was not the original
creation of the heavenly bodies as such, but rather their becoming available for the purpose of
regulating time and the cycles of the rotation and revolution of earth and moon. The specific verb
for “create ex nihilo” (bārā˒) is not used in Gen. 1:16, but rather the more general term, make
(˓āsâ). The fair inference is that a dense vapor encompassing the earth had hitherto precluded
this possibility, even though sufficient diffused light may have previously penetrated to support
the growth of plant life. (Note that the Hebrew of Gen. 1:14 may be rendered, “Let luminaries in
the firmament of heaven be for the purpose of separating between day and night, in order that
they may be for signs.”)
Advocates of the literal-day theory have often pointed to the sanction of Ex. 20:11 for
confirmation of literalness of the days. In confirming the sanctity of the Sabbath, Jehovah states:
“For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth … and rested on the seventh day.” But this does
not necessarily presuppose literal, twenty-four hour days, for the seventh day is explicitly
hallowed in terms of the completion of the work of creation. For this purpose of memorial
observance, the only possible way in which the seventh age (the age of completion, according to
the day-age theory) could be hallowed would be a literal seventh day of a seven-day week. It
would certainly be impractical to devote an entire geologic age to the commemoration of a
geologic age!

BIBLICAL CREATIONISM AND MODERN EVOLUTIONISM

More fundamental an issue than the length of the creative days is the question of the fact of
divine creation as over against such competing theories of origin as Darwinian evolution. As
formulated by Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species (1859), evolution sought to explain the
origin of biological species by natural selection rather than by God’s design. That is to say, the
process by which plants and animals developed was not governed by any divine intelligence
according to teleological principles, but rather according to a completely mechanical principle:
the survival of the fittest. As the reproductive cycle progresses, taught Darwin, the following
generation shows slight variations from the generation preceding. Over a long period of time,
after hundreds and thousands of generations, some of these variations become more or less fixed
characteristics which are passed on to the descendants. These new characteristics contribute to
the formation of varieties or subspecies, and finally to the emergence of new species. Those
characteristics which enabled their possessors to compete more successfully in the ceaseless
struggle with their environment insured their survival. But those who developed peculiarities
which gave them no advantage, but only disadvantage, in coping with their competitors,
naturally tended to die off. Hence only those that were fittest to survive were perpetuated and
became a successful species. Thus the lower and simpler gradually became more advanced and
complex, until finally Homo sapiens appeared as the climactic product of natural selection—
presumably because man is the most fitted for survival and can most successfully cope with his
environment.
As to the most fundamental question of all, the origin of matter itself, and the related question as
to the origin of the earliest form of life to appear in the primeval ooze, Darwin had no answer to
give, except possibly a deistic one (which dismisses God as a mere First Cause, who simply
started the mechanism going and then completely removed Himself from the scene). “Therefore I
should infer from analogy,” he says in one passage, “that probably all the organic beings which
have ever lived upon this earth have descended from one primordial form into which life was
first breathed by the Creator.” Therefore there is nothing completely atheistic about Darwin’s
formulation of evolution so far as the origin of matter is concerned (even though many of his
followers have decided for the eternal existence of matter rather than concede the existence of
God). Yet there remained no objective basis at all for the moral law or for spiritual values
beyond materialistic considerations of survival, the survival of “the fittest.” Furthermore, the
Darwinian theory left no room for any meaningful divine activity in the process of “creation”;
except for the supplying of primeval raw material, there really was no creation but only
development according to natural selection. But we must ask who or what determined the
selective process? And what or who determined fitness?! This represented almost a total
contradiction of Gen. 1.
Space will not permit a detailed or adequate treatment of the theory of evolution in a book of this
sort (even if its author had the equipment to handle it with competence). But it will perhaps be
sufficient to point out a few areas in which Darwin’s theory does not seem to square with the
evidence, and where it betrays such serious inadequacies as to relegate it increasingly to the
status of a mere passing phenomenon in the history of scientific thought. We shall treat these
weaknesses under the following four headings.
1. From the standpoint of genetics (the science of heredity), the basic assumptions of natural
selection run quite contrary to the evidence. Many decades of painstaking research have
demonstrated that while it is true that individuals within a species do vary slightly from one
another, it is not true that these variations are specifically inheritable by the next generation. The
extensive experiments of Gregor J. Mendel showed that the range of variation possible within a
species was strictly limited and afforded no progress whatsoever toward the development of a
new species. Thus the individuals of a race of pure-bred tall peas might vary slightly in height,
but the progeny of the tall ones was not on the average taller than the progeny of the short ones.
It is true that by selective breeding, certain characteristics possible within a single species may be
emphasized to form a special strain (as in the case of the many different types of dog), but there
is a strictly limited circle of possibilities beyond which no breeder can go. He is powerless, in
other words, to develop a new species. Mendel’s work proved conclusively that the “chance
variations” by which Darwin had set so much store are quite predictable and cannot possibly
contribute to the formation of new species.
The same verdict must be pronounced on Jean Baptiste de Lamarck’s theory of the inheritability
of acquired characteristics (a theory to which Darwin occasionally appealed when mere natural
selection seemed inadequate to account for a set of facts). Despite the enormous number of
experiments undertaken to prove Lamarckian “use inheritance” (as it is called), the end result has
been altogether negative. Characteristics acquired by special effort on the part of a parent are not
passed on to his children, for the simple reason that there is no possible way in which these
acquired characteristics (such as a special athletic proficiency) can affect his genes. All of
heredity (on the nonspiritual side, at least) seems to depend upon the chemistry of the genes
themselves. So far as the form or structure of animals is concerned, there is not a single claim to
have established the theory of use inheritance which has not subsequently been discredited.
It should be added that while evidence is lacking for the inheritability of individual variations,
there are sudden changes or mutations which occasionally take place in the history of a species.
For example, a new variety of plants when isolated in small colonies, as on a Mountainside, may
result from a sudden mutation (involving a slight alteration in the genes themselves). Yet the fact
remains that even though thousands of mutations have been closely studied, not a single clear
example has been demonstrated whereby a mutation has made an animal more complicated or
brought any new structure into existence. No progress whatsoever has been made since Darwin’s
time in solving any of the fundamental problems of evolution. In a review of M. J. D. White’s
Animal Cytology and Evolution (1954), I. Manton remarked: “The fundamental causes of
evolution on the grand scale, as it has occurred through geological time and in the fashioning of
the great groups of animals and plants, cannot yet be described or explained.”
2. Darwin’s argument from the data of embryology has proved quite fallacious. He reasoned that
in the development of the fetus in the womb it recapitulates its entire evolutionary past, as the
fertilized ovum enlarges and produces more and more complicated organs and members. The
visceral pouches in the human embryo, for example, were essentially the same organ as the gills
of a fish, and therefore point back to man’s emergence from a form of fish life. But this line of
reasoning conveniently overlooks the undeniable fact that these structures never function as gills
at any stage in embryonic life. Indeed, it is hard to see how the recapitulation theory can be
squared with the actual sequence of development within the fetus. For example, the respiratory
surface does not develop until very late in the formation of the embryo in the womb; yet it is
inconceivable that in any prehuman stage the putative ancestor of man could have survived
without any respiratory mechanism at all. Again, the size of the head in an embryo is simply
enormous in proportion to the rest of the body, and yet the head of all the alleged prehuman
ancestors was relatively small in proportion to the rest. Nor is it true that simple organs in the
fetus slowly become more complicated. The eye, for example, results from the final fitting
together of several different parts which appear to be formed separately at first and then are
combined according to a predetermined pattern for which there is no ascertainable physical
cause.
It’s true enough, to be sure, that the embryos of all mammals develop from single-celled ova
which appear to be quite identical, and that during the earlier stages this close resemblance
continues. But does this fact require a theory that all mammals developed from the same
common, pre-mammalian ancestors? A far more obvious and plausible explanation is that in the
development of any embryo from its initial stage as a one-celled ovum, its simpler parts must be
formed before the more complicated parts can be developed. We can hardly expect fine
adjustments and complicated organs to come into being before the main structure to which they
are to be attached. But to explain the earlier similarities of form by common ancestral origin is as
implausible (as Clark pungently puts it) as to imagine that raindrops are derived from pebbles
because both are round. “The connection is real enough, but it is a mathematical connection,
inherent in the nature of the universe, and is not due to any direct connection between the
objects.”
It is safe to say that there is no datum from embryology which does not betray the operation of
deliberate design and purpose by an all-wise Creator, rather than the mechanical operation of
natural selection. Very occasionally in the growth of an embryo the mechanism of growth seems
to malfunction. Then it is found that a totally new mechanism may take over and produce the
desired structure. Sometimes two or three of these “double assurance” mechanisms are called
into play in order to insure the proper development of the fetus; yet inexplicably enough, they go
into action when needed. But since such malfunctions are exceedingly rare, it is almost
impossible to account for them by any principle of the “survival of the fittest.” It looks much
more like the intervention of a divine intelligence. This, of course, is not to deny that some
fetuses do develop improperly and turn out to be defective specimens which can scarcely survive
or perform any useful function. In the case of human beings, the results can be quite tragic and
difficult to explain. But on Darwinian presuppositions it is impossible to explain even the sense
of pathos engendered by this example of dysteleology. The consistent Darwinian can only shrug
his shoulders and remark, “It is only surprising that there aren’t more of these.” For to the
Darwinian there is no answer beyond mechanistic natural selection and the “survival of the
fittest.”
3. Natural selection is unable to explain innumerable instances of adaptation in which there was
evidently no transitional stage. Natural selection would lead us to expect that ants and termites
learned to associate together in colonies because they found from experience that this increased
their chances of survival. But there are no fossil evidences whatever of either ants or termites
prior to their organized life together in colonies. Or, to take an anatomical example, we have to
consider how any supposed transitional stages toward the development of the organ of sight
could possibly have conferred any advantage in the battle for survival until the eye had actually
been fully formed. if the animal had possessed (in its transitional phase) a mere patch of skin
especially sensitive to light, and then the process of natural selection had been brought to bear
upon its successive mutations, how would anything short of actual sight have fitted the creature
to survive more successfully than competitors who lacked such light-sensitive patches? And yet
the Darwinian hypothesis necessarily implies that at every stage of the development of new and
more complicated organisms, even before they were at all usable, the animal so developing must
have enjoyed thereby some specific advantage over its competitors. As for the much-cited
example of the growth cycle of the frog, the principle of natural selection is of only limited help.
That is, it might conceivably explain why tadpoles learned to swim, feed, and run away from
their enemies more efficiently than less capable ancestors. But how does it throw any light upon
why they finally turned into frogs? Can it seriously be contended that frogs are more fitted to
survival than fish are? Clearly some more sophisticated explanation must be found than mere
mechanistic natural selection.
In short, the Darwinian theory accounts for the data of biology far less adequately than does the
sublimely simple affirmation of Genesis 1, that all species of plant and animal came into being in
response to the creative will of an omnipotent and all-wise God, and that their development has
in every stage been governed by His design. All the structural resemblances (such as the skeletal
resemblances so relied upon to indicate a genetic relationship between man and the lower orders
of vertebrates) may be satisfactorily accounted for by a directive force operating from without
(or from above), rather than by mechanical forces operating from within living tissue as such.
Even the phenomenon of apparently useless vestigial parts, such as the coccyx at the end of the
human spine, does not demonstrate an ancestry tracing back to tail-bearing simians. Such
vestiges only attest a general or basic plan followed by the creative force (or the divine
intelligence) which fashioned the various vertebrate phyla.
A similar carry-over of engineering design is traceable in the year-by-year development of the
modern automobile, from the 1901 Ford sedan (let us say) to the 1994 model. In some cases
vestigial remains (like the retention of a crank opening at the base of the radiator for many years
after self-starters had been introduced) marked the evolution of this make of car. The same thing
is true of the “portholes” of the Buick models between the 1940s and 1950s (until the final token
vestige of the 1957 model). But it can hardly be said that the earlier models made themselves
more advanced or more complicated; this was the work of the designers and engineers who
produced the new model for each successive year. There is nothing in the data of geology, or of
biology in general, to indicate any essential difference in the procedure followed by the Creator
Himself. Once the model, or species, had been set up, it then was ready for mass production
through the built-in system of procreation and reproduction with which all animals are
endowed—each species being controlled within Mendelian limits by its own particular set of
genes.
4. The modern abandonment of the Darwinian theory of gradual differentiation as the mechanism
by which all classes and orders of life have evolved has led to the substitution of a new type of
evolution (the quantum theory of emergent evolution) which commands the allegiance of most
foremost scientists today. But emergent evolution involves factors of sudden mutation or change
so radical as to put it into the category of a mere philosophical credo incapable of verification by
laboratory methods or of explanation on strictly mechanistic principles. In Darwin’s generation it
was confidently expected that more extended geological and biological research in subsequent
decades would uncover the transitional forms of life which would bridge the gap between the
various orders and phyla. But most twentieth-century scientists have completely despaired of this
search.
Austin H. Clark (The New Evolution [1930], p. 189), for example, remarked on “the entire lack
of any intermediates between the major groups of animals—as, for instance, between the
backboned animals or vertebrates, the echinoderms, the mollusks and the arthropods.” He went
on to say, “If we are willing to accept the facts, we must believe that there never were such
intermediates, or in other words, that these major groups have from the very first borne the same
relationship to each other that they have today.” Similarly G. G. Simpson pointed out that each
of the thirty-two known orders of mammals appeared quite suddenly in the paleontological
record. He stated, “The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have
the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one
order to another known.”
Clark, Simpson, and their modern colleagues have therefore taken refuge in the theory of
emergent evolution, which affirms that dramatic new forms arise by mere chance, or by some
kind of creative response to new environmental factors which cannot be further analyzed or
rationally described. But can such an explanation (which really is no explanation but only an
appeal for faith) be considered a more reasonable alternative than the creative act of a superior
intelligence? As Carl Henry puts it: “Supposition of abrupt emergence falls outside the field of
scientific analysis just as fully as the appeal to supernatural creative forces.”
Despite the foregoing considerations, however (or perhaps in ignorance of them), there are many
committed Christians who are prepared to accept the theory of evolution upon a theistic basis.
That is to say, they profess adherence to the mechanistic process of natural selection (according
to Darwin’s formulation), or even to the newer emergent theory of evolution; but they
nevertheless insist that matter was not eternal (as nontheists must suppose), but that it was
created by God ex nihilo. Furthermore, they regard the whole mechanism of the evolutionary
process as devised and controlled by God, rather than by some mysterious force which cannot be
entirely accounted for by science.
To those who hold this position it should be pointed out that historically the whole theory was
elaborated in an effort to explain the development of life along purely natural mechanical
principles, without the necessity of any divine influence whatever. Darwin and his colleagues
made the most determined efforts to overthrow the argument for God’s existence based upon the
evidence of design in nature, and exploited every conceivable instance of dysteleology and
purposelessness which they could discover. They pointed to the fact that out of the many
thousands of eggs laid by a mother fish a very small percentage ever survive to maturity, and that
only a very few seeds deposited by fruitbearing trees ever live to produce new trees. (Thus the
food supply afforded to other creatures by this overabundance of roe and fruit was conveniently
ignored.) A consistent effort was made to explain the universe without God. For this reason,
Darwinian evolution became the official philosophy of the leading atheistic movements of the
twentieth century (such as the purest form of Nazism and of Marxist socialism). Darwin’s
concession that a higher power may have provided the original raw material and vital impulse
which started evolution at the beginning was nevertheless a complete negation of Hebrew-
Christian revelation. It inevitably led to the result that moral and religious conceptions
discoverable in mankind result from a mere fortuitous combination of molecules and have no
counterpart in spiritual reality.
Evolution as a philosophy of world view really involves an outright denial of spiritual reality
even as it rejects the existence of a personal God. All of its leading exponents have said as much
in no uncertain terms. Ernst Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe (1929) employed the evolutionary
thesis to disprove supernatural religion and became thereby one of the major influences for
atheism in the twentieth century. G. G. Simpson declared that a wholehearted acceptance of
evolution is inconsistent with belief in the activity of God in the universe. Charles Darwin
himself, during an interview with a newspaper reporter soon after the publication of the Origin of
Species, simply shrugged his shoulders at the whole moral issue. When asked if it was not true
that his book had shown every criminal how to justify his ways, he simply dubbed the accusation
“a good squib” and let the matter drop. In view of such factors as these, it seems a very dubious
procedure for a convinced Christian who means to be loyal to the authority of Scripture to
acknowledge himself an evolutionist, except in a most restricted sense—in fact, in a sense utterly
unacceptable to Darwin and all his followers. For a Christian, there is no alternative to
identifying natural selection with divine selection, whether in a direct or an indirect sense.

The Antiquity of the Human Race

Since the first discoveries of the fossils and artifacts of prehistoric man back in the 1850s, the
antiquity of the human race has provided a problem of reconciliation with the Genesis record.
According to modern estimates the so-called Swanscombe man (found in Kent, England), the
Pithecanthropus (found in Java) and the Sinanthropus (found in Peking, China) lived anywhere
from 200,000 to 500,000 years ago. All of them show marked differences from Homo sapiens, to
be sure, and some paleanthropologists have conceded that “the cranial and dental differences …
appear to be as well marked as those which are commonly accepted as justifying a genetic
distinction between the gorilla and the chimpanzee.”
As for the Neanderthal man, commonly dated from 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, the same writer
says: “The skeletal differences from Homo sapiens are of much the same order as those which
have been accepted as valid evidence of specific distinction in other groups of primates.” These
early anthropoids cannot be dismissed as mere apes in their mentality, for their remains are
accompanied by stone implements, such as arrowheads and ax heads; and charred remains
indicate strongly the use of fire for cooking purposes. Especially in the case of the Neanderthal
deposits, there seems to be evidence of burial with adjacent implements as if there was some sort
of belief in life after death (necessitating the use of such implements—or their spiritual
counterpart—by the deceased). Some crude statuettes have likewise been discovered which may
possibly have had cultic purposes, and some of the remarkable paintings discovered in some of
the caves may have been of Neanderthal origin (although most were perhaps from a later age).
The radiocarbon analysis of the more recent find indicates strongly an age of at least 50,000
years. The fluorine content of the bones of the Pithecanthropus erectus indicates that they were
contemporaneous with the surrounding deposit in which they were found. The Zinjanthropus of
Tanganyika is dated by the potassium-argon process as 1,750,000 years old, according to a report
by L. S. B. Leakey.
It is theoretically possible, of course, that later research may prove that all of these chronological
estimates were based upon faulty methodology, and it may conceivably be that these earlier
anthropoids will have to be dated as much more recent. On the other hand, it is most unlikely that
they can be brought within the time span indicated by the genealogical lists of Gen. 5 and 10.
Either we must regard these lists as having no significance whatever as time indicators, or else
we must reject these earlier humanlike species as being descended from Adam at all.
Buswell states: “There is nothing in the Bible to indicate how long ago man was created.” This
appears to be an overstatement, for even allowing the numerous gaps in the chronological tables
given in Gen. 5 and Gen. 10 it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that a hundred times as
many generations are omitted in these tables as are included in them. (And yet this is what a
200,000 B.C. date for Adam would amount to.) In the genealogy of the Lord Jesus given in Matt.
1:2–17 there are only seven possible links missing as against a total of forty-two given (during
the 2000 years between Abraham and Christ), or a ratio of one to six. This is slender ground
upon which to build a theory that 1,980 generations were omitted from the list between Adam
and Abraham, and only nineteen or twenty were given. It therefore seems a dubious option for
one who holds to the accuracy of the Genesis record to accept a date of 200,000 B.C. for Adam.
The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible lists three possibilities for the genealogies of Gen. 5 and
10.
1. If they represent literal generations without any gaps, the total from Adam to the Flood comes
out to 1,656 years, and the total from the Flood to the birth of Abraham about 290 years. This
makes up a grand total of 1,946 years from Adam to Abraham. This interpretation is dubious,
however, since no such grand total (long date) is given in the text itself, and since the grouping
into ten predeluge and ten postdeluge generations is suspiciously similar to the schematized
fourteen, fourteen, fourteen of Matt. 1 (where demonstrably there are six or seven links missing).
Moreover, Luke 3:36 indicates that a Cainan, son of Arphaxad, is missing in Gen. 10:24 (which
states that Arphaxad was the “father” of Shelach, the son of Cainan according to Luke 3).
2. The genealogies record only the most prominent members of the ancestry of Abraham,
omitting an undetermined number of links (although presumably not as many links as actually
are named in the lists concerned). A variation of this view would construe the formula “A begat
B” as meaning either B himself or some unnamed ancestor of B (perfectly allowable in Hebrew
parlance, since grandfathers are occasionally said to have begotten their grandsons; at least
Bilhah’s grandsons are spoken of as her sons in 1 Chron. 7:13). The ages of the patriarchs who
lived several centuries (even 900 years or more) would be understood as the actual lifetime of the
individuals named. This view would allow for a time span of possibly five or six thousand years
between Adam and Abraham—depending upon how many links are omitted.
Incidentally, there is some question whether Abraham was really Terah’s oldest son, even though
he was mentioned first in Gen. 11:26, where Terah is stated to have begotten all three sons when
he was seventy—or at least he began fatherhood at that age. In Gen. 11:27 it is stated that Terah
begat Abraham, Nahor and Haran (who was apparently the eldest of the three sons). But since
Terah died at the age of 205 according to 11:32, Abraham could not have been born until his
father was 130, if he was only seventy-five at Terah’s decease—as suggested by 12:4. (While
there is nothing in Gen. 11 or 12 that states positively that Terah had died before Abraham left
Haran, this is made quite explicit in Acts 7:4.)
3. Or else the names listed in Genesis 5 represent an individual and his direct line by
primogenitor—an interpretation which makes possible adding the entire lifetime figures almost
end to end, thus coming out to a grand total of 8,227 years between the birth of Adam and the
flood. For example, when Adam is said to have lived 930 years, this really means that Adam and
his direct line were at the head of affairs for 930 years. At the end of this time they were
superseded by the family of Seth, which remained in control through Seth’s main line for 912
years (Gen. 5:8). Thus it would not have been until 1,842 years after Adam’s birth that the family
of Enosh took over the leadership—and so on. One difficulty with this theory, however, is that
Seth is the oldest surviving son of Adam to be mentioned, apart from the exiled Cain, and it is
difficult to imagine by what other son Adam’s direct line would have descended before the
allegedly collateral line of Seth took over.
On the whole, then, the second interpretation seems the most tenable of the three. (The first
interpretation, of course, leaves insufficient room to account even for the attested history of
Egypt, which doubtless goes back to at least 3500 years B.C., and that, too, necessarily after the
flood.)
To revert to the problem of the Pithecanthropus, the Swanscombe man, the Neanderthal and all
the rest (possibly even the Cro-Magnon man, who is apparently to be classed as Homo sapiens,
but whose remains seem to date back at least to 20,000 B.C.), it seems best to regard these races
as all prior to Adam’s time, and not involved in the Adamic covenant. We must leave the
question open, in view of the cultural remains, whether these pre-Adamite creatures had souls
(or, to use the trichotomic terminology, spirits). But the clear implication of Gen. 1:26 is that
God was creating a qualitatively different being when he made Adam (for note that the word
rendered “man” in Gen. 1:26–27 is the Hebrew ˒Adam), a being who was uniquely fashioned in
the image of God. Only Adam and his descendants were infused with the breath of God and a
spiritual nature corresponding to God Himself. Romans 5:12–21 demands that all mankind
subsequent to Adam’s time, at least, must have been literally descended from him, since he
entered into covenant relationship with God as the representative of the entire race of man. This
indicates that there could have been no true genetic relationship between Adam (the first man
created in the image of God) and the pre-Adamite races. However close the skeletal structure of
the Cro-Magnon man (for example) may have been to Homo sapiens, this factor is scarcely
relevant to the principal question of whether these cave men possessed a truly human soul or
personality. They may have been exterminated by God for unknown reasons prior to the creation
of the original parent of the present human race. Adam, then, was the first man created in the
spiritual image of God, according to Gen. 1:26–27, and there is no evidence from science to
disprove it.
After these preliminary questions relating to the confrontation between the first chapter of
Genesis and modern science, we are now in a position to proceed with the study of the remainder
of the book in the chapter following.
 15
Genesis (continued)
IT IS THE PURPOSE of this chapter to discuss the various passages in Genesis about which
particular question has been raised, other than the matters pertaining to natural origin which have
aleady been handled in the previous chapter. In each case the passage to be treated has been used
as the basis of a charge of inaccuracy and unreliability leveled at the book as a whole.

The Historicity of Adam and the Fall

As to the relationship of Gen. 2 to Gen. 1, it has already been pointed out that the use of the
divine names (Elohɩ̂ m and Yahweh) is quite reconcilable with unity of authorship. Since Elohɩ̂ m
(“God”) was the appropriate title for noncovenantal contexts, Moses (assuming that he was the
author of the whole book) could very well have employed it exclusively for the creation account
of chapter 1 and then shifted to Yahweh (Elohɩ̂ m) (for the most part) in chapter 2, where he dealt
with the covenant of works set up between God and Adam.
Questions have been raised as to how seriously we are to take this whole narrative about Adam
and Eve (and the serpent in the Garden of Eden) as literal history. Many prefer to regard it as a
mere myth or fable (suprahistory, to use the neo-orthodox term) in which the moral downfall of
man is described by a fictitious episode designed to illustrate it. (Yet insofar as man is a fallen
creature, a moral agent with an innate sense of guilt, the myth allegedly reflects a sublime truth,
even though no such isolated episode actually took place.) No decisive objections, however, have
ever been raised against the historicity of Adam and Eve either on historical, scientific, or
philosophical grounds. The protest has been based essentially upon subjective concepts of
improbability.
From the standpoint of logic, it is virtually impossible to accept the authority of Rom. 5 (“By one
man sin entered into the world.… By one man’s offense death reigned by one.… By one man’s
disobedience many were made sinners”) without inferring that the entire human race must have
descended from a single father. In Rom. 5, Adam is contrasted with Christ. If therefore Christ
was a historical individual, Adam himself must have been historical (or else the inspired apostle
was in error). Again, Paul takes the details of Gen. 2 and of the temptation and fall in Gen. 3 as
literal history. In 1 Tim. 2:13–14 he says: “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was
not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” There can be no question
that the New Testament authors accepted the literal historicity of Adam and Eve. The origin of
the human race is necessarily a matter of revelation by God, since no written records could
extend back to a time prior to the invention of writing. Conceivably the true account of man’s
origin could have been handed down by oral tradition (and perhaps it was so handed down until
Moses’ time). But apart from revelation, written down as inspired Scripture, there could be no
assurance as to which of the bewildering variety of legends of man’s origin known to the many
different cultures of earth was the true and reliable account. Here the inspired record tells of a
literal Adam and Eve, and gives no indication whatever that the account is intended to be
mythical. In this connection note that Luke 3:38 traces the ancestry of Jesus back to Enos, to
Seth, and finally to Adam himself (who must therefore have been as historic an individual as
Seth and Enos). It was certainly taken as historical by Christ and the apostles.
Some recent writers, such as Alan Richardson, have compared the narrative material in Gen. 1–
11 to the parables of the New Testament. “A parable is a story which may or may not be literally
true (no one asks whether the good Samaritan ever literally happened); but it conveys a meaning
beyond itself. It implies that beyond the words of the story which our outward ears have heard
there is a meaning which only our spiritual hearing can detect.” But this comparison with New
Testament parables involves the presumption that the author of Genesis intended the narrative of
chapters 1–11 to be a mere analogy or comparison to illustrate some theological truth, and did
not mean for his readers to get the impression that these episodes narrated ever took place in
actual history. The characteristic introduction to Jesus’ parables was: “The kingdom of God is
like—.” Always there is some doctrinal or ethical teaching which is being explained to the
listener, and an illustration is resorted to in order to make the point clear. But the narratives and
genealogical lists of Gen. 1–11 have no such framework. Nowhere is it stated that the beginning
of the world or of mankind was like anything analogous. A parable is never to be explained in
terms of itself; it always involves an analogy drawn from something else. Just as it would never
have been said, “The kingdom of God is like the kingdom of God,” so it could never have been
intended to imply, “The beginning of the human race was like the beginning of the human race,”
or “The universal flood was like the universal flood.” Hence the parabolic element is completely
missing here, and Richardson’s interpretation is scarcely tenable.

Noah’s Ark and the Flood

As to the great deluge of Gen. 6–8, some discussion has already been devoted to the specious
grounds upon which Wellhausen dissected this account into J and P. There it was shown that the
entire section consisted of one tightly knit, homogeneous narrative.
The larger question raised by nineteenth century scholarship was whether such an event as a
world-wide flood ever took place. The comparative lack of geologic evidence for a worldwide
cataclysm has given rise to doubts as to the universality of the flood. It is alleged that no
characteristic or uniform flood-type deposits have been discovered in the sites excavated in the
Mesopotamian Valley. The thick flood stratum found by Leonard Woolley at Ur dates from early
fourth millennium (ca. 3800 B.C.), but only one other flood stratum from that period has thus far
been discovered, that found by Stephen Langdon at Kish (a much shallower deposit,
incidentally). The other flood deposits, discovered at Kish, Shuruppak, Uruk, and (possibly)
Lagash, represent an inundation of a thousand years later, judging from the archaeological
remains and stratigraphical sequence. While the excavations may not in all cases have penetrated
low enough to reach the 3800 B.C. level in some of the above mentioned, in Kish, at least, the dig
went down to apparently undisturbed virgin soil right below the 2800 B.C. level.
It is of course true that these few deep excavations are by themselves insufficient for any firm
conclusions. But they have led most archaeologists to question the possibility of a general deluge
over a more than local area—at least within the period investigated in the excavations
themselves—and even staunch conservative apologists as listed by Ramm have defended the
theory of a flood restricted to the cradle of the human race in Mesopotamia (or possibly
extending up to the Caspian basin).
George E Wright seems to incline to the possibility that it may have been limited to the
Euphrates valley, provided the human race was then restricted to this area and was thus totally
destroyed. Yet he also refers to geological evidence for the flood in Egypt, Palestine, Sicily,
France, and England (possibly even North America). The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
Commentary (JFB) indicates that the Hebrew text does not necessarily imply a universal flood.
L. M. Davies also conceded that the flood was not necessarily universal, although he pointed to
such distant phenomena as the frozen mammoths of Siberia as evidence for a very extensive and
sudden inundation. (Unfortunately, however, for this correlation, the latest of the Siberian
mammoths is conjectured by paleontologists to be earlier than 30,000 B.C.) J. W. Dawson denies
that the Hebrew author had in mind a literally universal flood.
In explanation of this assertion, it needs to be pointed out that the Hebrew ˒ereṣ, translated
consistently as “earth” in our English Bibles, is also the word used for “land” (e.g., the land of
Israel, the land of Egypt). There is another term, tēbēl, which means the whole expanse of the
earth, or the world as a whole. Nowhere does tēbēl occur in this account, but only ˒ereṣ, in all the
statements which sound quite universal in the English Bible (e.g., 7:4, 10, 17, 18, 19). Thus, Gen.
6:17c can be rendered: “Everything that is in the land shall die”—that is, in whatever
geographical region is involved in the context and situation. If this interpretation be allowed,
then the mountains whose summits were submerged by the flood would have been the relatively
lower mountains of the region surrounding Mesopotamia, rather than including the mighty
Himalayas (such as Mount Everest with its nearly six miles in height). Correspondingly, the
word ground (˓adāmāh) which occurs in the ASV of 7:4 (“earth,” KJV) can be understood as the
soil surface of the same area covered by the ˒ereṣ of the other verses. But the phrase “under the
whole heaven” in 7:19 (“and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven,” ASV)
may not be so easily disposed of. It is doubtful whether anywhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures
this expression “the whole heaven” can be interpreted to indicate a mere geographical region.
For this reason most careful exegetes, like Franz Delitzsch in the last century and more recently
H. C. Leupold,10 have not conceded the exegetical possibility of interpreting Gen. 7 as describing
a merely local flood.
Formidable scientific problems are raised by a universal flood, according to Ramm’s summary.
(1) According to the best estimates, to cover the highest Himalayas would require eight times
more water than our planet now possesses. (2) The withdrawal of so great a quantity of water
constitutes an almost insuperable problem, for there would be no place to which it could drain
off. (Ramm so interprets the verb shākak in Gen. 8:1—yet the lexicons render it “decrease,”
“abate” [“assuaged,” KJV and ASV] rather than “drain off.”) The mechanics of this abatement of
water would certainly be difficult, for the atmosphere could not possibly hold that much water in
evaporated form, and it is doubtful if any underground cavities in the earth could receive more
than a small fraction of this additional volume of water. (3) Scarcely any plant life could have
survived submersion under salt water for over a year, and the mingling of ocean water with the
rain must have resulted in a lethal saline concentration, even though the mixture would have
been considerably diluted. Practically all marine life would have perished, except those
comparatively few organisms which can withstand tremendous pressure, for 90 percent of
present marine life is found in the first fifty fathoms, and many of these species cannot survive
distant migration from their native feeding grounds. Presumably the fresh water fish would have
died, even though the salinity might have been high enough to support saltwater fish. (4) Certain
areas of the earth’s surface show definite evidence of no submersion. For example, in Auvergne,
France, there are reportedly cones of loose scoria and ashes from volcanoes thousands of years
older than the flood, and yet they show no signs of having been washed or disturbed by flood
waters.
Perhaps difficulties (1) and (3) can be accounted for by special creative or recreative acts of God.
(But why then the concern for the preservation of the land animals in the ark, if re-creation was
so readily available?) But (2) would seem to call for a good deal of uncreation or complete
annihilation of aqueous matter—which appears highly improbable. Difficulty (4) seems to defy
explanation, unless the volcanoes involved were really of post-Noahic origin, and the criteria for
dating them earlier turn out to be erroneous. Or else perhaps the scoria and ashes may not have
been so easily disturbed by water action as the argument assumes, or else they may have been
covered over by later strata before the Flood.
It cannot be maintained, however, that even a local flood will solve all these scientific
difficulties. Gen. 7:19 states most explicitly that all the water level rose well above “all the high
mountains that were under the whole heaven.” Assuming that the mountains involved were
merely local (a difficult interpretation to make out from the text), at the very least the peaks of
Mount Ararat itself were covered, since the ark came to rest where the higher peak (over 17,000
feet high) would be visible. The unavoidable inference would be that the water level rose more
than 17,000 feet above the present sea level. This creates difficulties almost as grave for the local
flood theory as those which that theory is supposed to avoid. How could the level have been that
high at Ararat without being the same height over the rest of the world? Only during a very
temporary surge, such as that of a tidal wave, can water fail to seek its own level. To suppose a
17,000-foot level in Armenia simultaneous with an uninundated Auvergne in France would be to
propound a more incredible miracle than anything implied by the traditional understanding of a
universal flood.
The only possible solution, apparently, would be found in the supposition that the height of
Ararat was much lower than at present. It is very difficult to date reliably a major upward thrust
of the mountain-making variety, and hence it is quite possible that even in the few millennia
which have followed the flood, the great mountain ranges have attained far higher elevation than
they did before Noah’s time. Thus the recent uplift of the Sierra Nevada range in California is the
only reasonable explanation of the dying out of the bristle-cone pine tree, thousands of years old,
on their eastem slopes which (to judge from the width of the season rings in their trunks)
apparently flourished during an earlier period when rainfall from the landward breezes from the
Pacific shore was fairly plentiful. Since this species is still dying out under conditions created by
increased elevation of the westernmost peaks (resulting in the cutting off of winds from the
Pacific), this must have been of recent occurrence (The National Geographic [March 1958], pp.
355–68). But such a supposition could be applicable not only to the Ararat range but also to the
Himalayas and the Cordilleras as well, and it would alleviate somewhat the problem of water
supply for a universal flood.
A very interesting line of evidence has been furnished by some exponents of diluvialism in the
various ossiferous fissures which have been discovered in widely separate locations in both
hemispheres. A. M. Rehwinkel, for example, in his Flood (1951), describes these great fissures,
some of them in hills of considerable height, and anywhere from 140 to 300 feet in depth,
containing the most heterogeneous mammal remains. Since no skeleton is complete, the
inference is that none of these animals fell into these fissures while still alive. Nor is there any
evidence of weathering in these bones, nor of being rolled by streams. They must have been
deposited under water, since they were cemented together by calcite. Notably in one such deposit
in the Saar Valley region were found the remains of bears, wolves, and oxen, as well as many
small animals; others have been located on the island of Cerigo or Kythera (off the southeastern
tip of the Peloponnesus), in the Rock of Gibraltar, and near Odessa on the Black Sea. This last
named site was excavated in 1847 and produced about 4,500 bones of bears, hyenas, horses,
boars, mammoths, rhinoceros, aurochs, deer, and many small creatures. In Malta a fissure was
discovered in which along with these heterogeneous remains were found huge blocks of stone
which could only have been carried there by violent water action. At Agate Springs in Nebraska,
a similar discovery was made in 1876. In a ten-acre area were the remains of at least a thousand
animals who apparently had died instantly in great numbers.
All these finds certainly point to a sudden catastrophe involving the breaking up of the earth
surface into enormous cracks, into which were poured the corpses of great numbers of animals
who were suddenly overwhelmed in a flood. Whether or not the fluorine dating and carbon 14
tests would indicate a sufficiently recent date to identify this catastrophe with Noah’s flood is
another matter. In the case of extinct species such as the mammoth, the question of the true date
of their extinction is of pivotal importance. Some scientific grounds for bringing this event closer
to our own time would have to be found before these data (assembled by George McCready
Price and repeated by Rehwinkel) can be associated with the biblical episode. It is possible that
uniformitarian presuppositions with regard to the fluorine test and carbon 14 will some day be
shown invalid by the discovery of new evidence.
At this point it should be mentioned that some writers have raised the question of whether in
point of fact the flood resulted in the destruction of the entire human race (apart from the family
of Noah). The list of descendants in the respective lines of Ham, Shem, and Japheth as recorded
in Gen. 10 does not permit any easy identification with the remoter races who lived in the lower
reaches of Africa, Far East Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Particularly in the case of
Australia, with its peculiar fauna indicating a long period of separation from the Eurasian
continent, the difficulty of assigning either the human or the subhuman population with the
passengers in the ark has been felt to be acute. Perhaps, then, these scholars suggest, we are to
see in the family of Noah only the ancestors of the nations more immediately surrounding the
Holy Land, that is, the peoples of the Near and Middle East, and of the Mediterranean
coastlands.
This suggestion encounters at least three formidable difficulties, in the light of the biblical
evidence. The first is that the divine purpose, as indicated in the flood narrative, was to destroy
the entire human race. Thus in Gen. 6:7 we read: “And the Lord [Jehovah] said, I will destroy
man [hā˒ādām] whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the
creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” So also verse
17: “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh,
wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die.”
Even if we hold in abeyance the admissibility of translating ˒ereṣ here as “land” rather than
“earth,” it seems quite evident that a total destruction of the human race was involved.
Second, it is made abundantly evident in the Genesis account that the reason for sending the
flood was the sinful condition of mankind. Gen. 6:5 reads: “And Jehovah saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.” Again, in verse 11: “The earth also was corrupt [wattishshāḥēt]
before God, and the earth was filled with violence” [ḥāmās—“injurious wrongdoing”]. It hardly
seems likely that the ancestors of the Australians and Far Eastern peoples presented such a stark
contrast in morals to the Middle Eastern nations that God saw fit to exempt them from the
judgment of the flood. The Scripture clearly includes all mankind in the verdict of guilty (e.g.,
Rom. 3:19, “That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be guilty” [“accountable,”
RSV] before God”). This is a basic premise of the New Testament gospel. No ground for
differentiating between the nations closer to Palestine and those more remote from it can
possibly be made out on the basis of superior morality.
Third, we have the unequivocal corroboration of the New Testament that the destruction of the
human race at the time of the flood was total and universal. In 2 Peter 3:6 we read: “The world
that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” Compare 2 Peter 2:5: God “spared not the
old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood
upon the world of the ungodly.” Christ Himself remarked, according to Matt. 24:38–39,
concerning the days of Noah: “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew
not until the flood came, and took them all [hapantas] away; so shall also the coming of the Son
of man be.” While the word all may not always be used in a completely universal sense in
Scripture, it is consistently used to apply to the whole number of individuals involved in the
situation under discussion. Certainly all men since Adam have been sinners; therefore even in
Noah’s day all must have been included in the destruction of the great deluge.
One very important line of evidence has yet to be mentioned, and that is the remarkable
prevalence of oral and written traditions concerning the flood which have persisted among the
most diverse peoples of earth. The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians of Mesopotamia
might well be expected to cherish a similar tradition to that of the Hebrews, since they lived so
close to the presumed seat of antediluvian civilization. Possibly the Egyptian legend reported in
Plato’s Timaeus, and Manetho’s version (in which only Toth was saved from the flood) would be
explicable from their geographical proximity to the Fertile Crescent. The Greek tradition of
Deucalion and Pyrrha (so charmingly related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses) might have been a
borrowing from the Near East. The same could be true of the Noah tradition in Apamea (Asia
Minor) which inspired a representation of the ark on some of their coins.
But what shall we say of the legend of Manu preserved among the Hindus (according to which
Manu and seven others were saved in a ship from a worldwide flood); or of Fah-he among the
Chinese (who understood that he was the only survivor, along with his wife, three sons, and three
daughters); or of Nu-u among the Hawaiians; or of Tezpi among the Mexican Indians; or of
Manabozho among the Algonquins? All of these agree that all mankind was destroyed by a great
flood (usually represented as worldwide) as a result of divine displeasure at human sin, and that a
single man with his family or a very few friends survived the catastrophe by means of a ship or
raft or large canoe of some sort.
Not all the primitive flood traditions include the saving agency of an ark. Among some, such as
the aborigines of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and the Battaks of Sumatra, it was a
very high mountain top which furnished the vital refuge for the lone survivor. But otherwise the
main outlines of the legend follow the basic structure of the Genesis account. The Kurnai (a tribe
of Australian aborigines), the Fiji Islanders, the natives of Polynesia, Micronesia, New Guinea,
New Zealand, New Hebrides, the ancient Celts of Wales, the tribesmen of Lake Caudie in the
Sudan, the Hottentots, and the Greenlanders, all have their traditions of a universally destructive
deluge which wiped out the entire human race except for one or two survivors. The most
complete collection of these flood legends from all over the world is contained in Richard
Andree’s German work Die Flutsagen Ethnographisch Betrachet (1891). In English perhaps the
most comprehensive report is found in James Frazer’s Folklore in the Old Testament (vol. 1,
1918). Whether or not the worldwide prevalence of these traditions is reconcilable with a local-
flood theory, at least it emphasizes the inclusion of all human races in the descendants of Noah,
rather than excepting some of the populations of Africa, India, China, and America (as Ramm
seems to imply).
Often the Genesis account has been criticized as implausible because of the insufficient capacity
of the ark according to the dimensions given. But on the basis of a cubit of twenty-four inches
(although it may have been as much as four inches shorter) the ark would have been 600 feet
long, 100 feet wide, and 60 feet deep. Assuming a boxlike construction (altogether probable in
view of its peculiar purpose), its capacity would then have been 3,600,000 cubic feet, or room
enough for 2000 cattle cars (each of which carries 18 to 20 cattle, or 60 to 80 hogs, or 80 to 100
sheep). At the present time there are only 290 main species of land animal larger than sheep in
size; there are 757 more species ranging in size from sheep to rats, and there are 1,358 smaller
than rats. Two of each of these species would fit very comfortably into the cubic capacity of the
ark, and leave plenty of room for fodder. There are, of course, manifold problems connected with
maintaining such a large number of animals over so many months (especially if they maintained
their normal eating habits), but none of them is insuperable. Perhaps it should be remarked at this
point that a mere local flood, only coextensive with the human race in the Mesopotamian or
Aral-Caspian depressions, is hard to reconcile with the divine insistence (cf. Gen. 6:19–20) upon
the preservation of representatives of all the various kinds of animal. There are very few species
today which are confined to that particular region, and so it is difficult to see why the animals in
the surrounding, nonflooded areas would not have been able to repopulate the devastated region
without hindrance, once the waters had receded. Hence, it would have been pointless to include
them in the ark, unless the flood was indeed worldwide.
In an early Sumerian record discovered at Nippur is the earlier Sumerian account of the Flood,
which records the event which, although broken after 37 lines, relates the address of a deity to
his fellow gods apparently stating that this deity would save mankind from destruction.
Subsequent to that, man will build cities and temples to the gods. After another break of 37 lines
it states that kingship was lowered from heaven to earth and five cities were founded. These must
have had a great deal to do with the decision of the gods to destroy mankind. In the next readable
portion of this account we find that some of the gods are dissatisfied over this cruel decision.
Ziusudra, the Sumarian equivalent of Noah, is now introduced as a pious and god-fearing king
who is concerned to receive divine revelations in dreams or incantations while standing by a
wall. Ziusudra hears the voice of a god informing him of the decision made by the assembly to
send a flood to “destroy the seed of mankind.” Apparently the text continued with detailed
instructions to Ziusudra how to build a giant boat to save himself from destruction. But, 40 lines
later, when the text again becomes legible, the flood had come upon earth with all violence for
seven days and nights. After that the sun-god, Utu, came forth bringing his precious light to
earth. Ziusudra prostrates himself before him and offers sacrifice. The poem closes with the
narrative that portrays the deification of Ziusudra for his remarkable service in saving the human
race. This was published by Amo Poebel in PBS, v, 1914 (ANET2, pp. 42–44).
According to the Gilgamesh Epic, which contains the Babylonian account of the deluge, it was
after an assembly of gods had decreed the flood, that the god Ea betrayed this plan to a man
named Utnapishtim of Shuruppak (a city on the Euphrates). Making up a lie (at Ea’s suggestion)
to lull the rest of the population into security, Utnapishtim built his unwieldy, cube-shaped ark
(120 cubits in each dimension), and upon a signal (prearranged with the sun-god Shamash), he
closed the door on himself, his family, his helmsman Puzur-Amurri, and all the animals in the six
decks of his ship, and the deluge came. It lasted for two weeks (as contrasted with the one year
and seventeen days of the Genesis account), and was of such violence in rain and wind that even
the gods cowered in fear (the goddess Ishtar even shedding tears of regret at the destruction of
mankind). After landing on the mountain of Nisir (in the Zagros Range northeast of Babylon),
the ark held fast, and Utnapishtim sent out (a) a dove, (b) a swallow, and (c) a raven, the last of
which did not return. He then disembarked and offered sacrifice to the gods, all of whom were
by this time were so famished for lack of offerings that they came swooping down on the altar
like a swarm of hungry flies (tab. XI. 1. 161). Enlil (or Bel) came up afterward, very angry that
Utnapishtim had escaped death, but Ea successfully appealed to his sense of justice and
reconciled Enlil to what had happened. Enlil thereupon promoted Utnapishtim and his wife to
divine immortality. The resemblances to the Genesis narrative are such as to suggest a common
origin in ancient oral tradition, but the differences are too great to permit a possibility of
borrowing by the one from the other. The stark contrast between the passion-driven,
quarrelsome, greedy gods of the Babylonian pantheon and the majestic holiness of Jehovah is
most striking and significant. Likewise the utter implausibility of a cube-shaped ark and an
inundation of the entire world by a mere fourteen-day downpour stand in opposition to the
seaworthy dimensions and the gradual sinking of the waters in the biblical record.

The Table of Nations in Genesis 10

From the standpoint of linguistic relationships there appear to be some marked discrepancies
between the historical affinities among the Near Eastern nations and those indicated by the
genealogical tables of Gen. 10. For example, Canaan is said to be descended from Ham (v. 6),
and yet the Canaanites of 2000 B.C. were speaking a West Semitic dialect (of which Hebrew
itself is a subdivision). It must be borne in mind, however, that language is not necessarily
decisive for ethnic relationship, for Germanic Visigoths ended up speaking Spanish in Spain, the
Ostrogoths Italian in Italy, the Germanic Franks adopted French in France, and the French-
speaking Normans finally took up English in England. Correspondingly the Hamitic tribes which
conquered Palestine in the third millennium B.C. may have succumbed to the influence of
Semitic-speaking neighbors, regardless of what their original tongue may have been. It should
moreover be noted that this assignment of the Canaanites to the posterity of Ham can only be
accounted for on the basis of an accurate historical tradition preserved to the Hebrews of Moses’
day. Otherwise they would have had every motivation to assign the Canaanites to Shem, since
they spoke a Semitic language at least as early as the days of Abraham and Jacob (cf. Gen.
31:47).
Another problem is presented by the appearance of Sheba as a descendant both of Ham (v. 7) and
of Shem (v. 28). In all probability the Sabaeans were originally Hamitic, but continual
intermixture with Semitic neighbors in South Arabia finally altered their ethnic complexion to
make them predominantly Semitic. Thus both the relationship of verse 7 and that of verse 28
would be correct.
As for Cush, verses 8–10 indicate he was the father of Nimrod of Babylonia, and yet his name
became associated with Ethiopia (cf. Isa. 11:11; Ezek. 30:4, ASV marg.), a country known to the
Egyptians as K;š (and may have been vocalized as Kūsh). Verse 6 refers to him as a son of Ham,
which of course agrees with an African location. On the other hand, the Al Amran tribe of
Arabia calls the region of Zebid in Yemen by the name Kush. There was also an important city
near Babylon named Kish, from which Nimrod may have come. Putting all these evidences
together, Unger (AOT, p. 83) suggests that the original home of the Hamitic Cushites was in
Lower Mesopotamia, where Nimrod raised them to great power. From there the Cushites may
well have extended their power to the Yemenite region of Arabia, and then crossed the Red Sea
to invade “Ethiopia” (an area now occupied by the Republic of Sudan) and imposed their name
upon that entire district. This would be no more unlikely than the colonization of Carthaginia by
Phoenician settlers or the conquest of French Normandy, Saxon England, and Muslim Sicily by
the Normans from Norway. Earlier examples would be the settlement and conquest of Sicily and
southern Italy by the Greeks in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Some authorities draw into
the discussion the little-known Kushu tribe mentioned in Middle Kingdom Egyptian inscriptions
as inhabiting the borders of Syria and Palestine. But it is not clear how these could have
engendered all the nations of Gen. 10:7 (most of which inhabited the Arabian Peninsula), or
furnished the background for Nimrod, unless of course they actually represented settlements
from the original Kushites of Lower Babylonia.
In view of the foregoing, it seems that A. H. Sayce was overhasty in surrendering the genetic
reliability of Gen. 10 and interpreting it as merely a description of geographical relationships at a
time when Canaan was under Egyptian domination (and hence would have been regarded as
Hamitic, since Egypt or Mizraim was descended from Ham).” Even G. E. Wright (in the
Westminster Atlas) concedes that this list is arranged on the whole from a racial point of view.
Some of the more interesting correspondences between the names of this chapter and the forms
which they assume in Akkadian inscriptions are here listed. Of the descendants of Japheth,
Gomer is identified with the Gimirriya or Gimirrai (known to the Greeks as Cimmerians), who
came down from above the Caucasus Range and invaded Asia Minor, settling in Cappadocia.
Madai was the ancestor of the Medes, and Javan of the Greeks (the name seems to have been
preserved in the Ionians). Tubal’s descendants were the Tabali, who fought Tiglath-pileser I
around 1100 B.C., and the race of Meshech were the Mushke who warred with Shalmaneser III in
the ninth century. Both lived in eastern Asia Minor. There is no extant record of the descendants
of Magog. As for Tiras, he seems to have fathered the Tursenoi or Tyrrhenians, a Pelasgian race
who at first inhabited the Aegean region.
Ashkenaz, of the line of Gomer, is identified with the Ashkuz or Scythians, who invaded the
Near East from the North (via the Caucasus) and were formidable antagonists of the Assyrians,
the Persians, and the Greeks. Little is known of Riphath, and Togarmah is tentatively identified
with Tegarama in Southwestern Armenia. Elishah, of the line of Javan, is Alashia, now usually
identified with Cyprus (cf. Westminster Atlas), as is also Kittim (a name preserved in Citium on
the southern coast of that island). Tarshish has been associated with localities in Sardinia (where
the name has been found on inscriptions) and also with Spain. Dodanim is perhaps to be
connected with the Dardanians of the region around Troy in northwest Asia Minor; the Dardana
are apparently equivalent to the Dardanians. But most scholars prefer the spelling Rodanim
which occurs in the parallel passage in 1 Chron. 1:7 (ASV), apparently referring to the people of
the island of Rhodes.
Cush has already been discussed. Mizraim (“The Two Districts”) refers to Egypt; Phut is to be
identified with Puta (referred to by Darius I) in Cyrenaica. A distinction should be drawn
between Ludim (v. 13), ancestor of the Lybians (if the true original reading, as Albright thinks,
was Lubim), and Lud (v. 22), progenitor of the Lydians of Asia Minor. The classification of
Elam as Semitic (v. 22) has been challenged on linguistic grounds, since Elamite or Susian was a
language non-Semitic in character But as we have already seen, language is no infallible
indicator of ethnic relationship, and there was besides, an early penetration of Semitic-speaking
conquerors into Elam in the ascendancy of Sargon of Agade (ca. 2200 B.C.).
Concerning the descendants of Shem, Unger (AOT, pp. 97–99) lists all the available information,
which is unfortunately meager enough. But as to the tribal descendants of Aram and Joktan (in
Arabia), Albright has this interesting comment: “The most significant thing about the names of
the tribal descendants of Aram and Joktan is that nearly all the names are archaic, not hitherto
having been found in the inscriptions of the first millennium from Assyria and South Arabia.
Moreover, several of the names belong to types known as personal names only in the early
second millennium, though they may have continued as tribal names for many centuries
thereafter.”

The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues

Genesis 11 informs us that initially the descendants of Noah used the same language and
constituted a single culture which developed into a form of humanism that led them to emphasize
a unity of polity and worship which was to be perpetuated by the erection of an enormous
skyscraper that would serve as the capital of their domain. Because of the arrogance which
underlay this project God saw fit to bring it to a halt and used the means of bringing them into a
state of confusion because of their inability to speak any longer in the same language.
Chapter 10 of Genesis deals with the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth as they began to
repopulate the earth. There is no real indication in this chapter as to the languages they spoke,
and so it is reasonable to assume that they all spoke about the same tongue as long as they were
grouped together in the region of Mesopotamia. Ronald Youngblood in the NIV Study Bible
suggests that the confusion of tongues episode may well have preceded the emergence of the
various languages mentioned in chapter 10. This might be a possible inference were it not for
Gen. 11:1, which plainly states that the whole human race at that time had one language only,
even though they respected their ancestral division. Other recent evangelical commentators (such
as Kyle Yates in Wycliffe Bible Commentary (1962); likewise H. L. Ellison in The New
Layman’s Bible Commentary (1979), D. E Payne in The International Bible Commentary (1986),
including even some of the older commentaries like Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, seem to
assume that the confusion of languages at Babel occurred after the spread of nations in the
Middle East.
The motivation for God’s intervention at this point is very clear and understandable. The desire
to remain in international harmony was perhaps reasonable at that juncture, but unfortunately it
involved an effort to maintain One World unity upon a humanistic basis. The enormous tower
they planned to erect would serve as a sort of United Nations headquarters that would keep all of
Noah’s descendants politically correct, as it were, without any meaningful regard to the
supremacy of God. They purposed to “make a great name” for themselves (v. 4), using the latest
architectural techniques emerging from the invention of hard-baked bricks. Their mindset
showed a certain approximation to modern-day attitudes that assume that man can get along very
nicely without God and successfully solve all their personal and societal problems simply by
working together.
God’s response to this challenge was swift and decisive. The result of human self-pride is mutual
alienation. Because of sin we become so egoistic that we can no longer understand each other,
nor do we even care to do so. They suddenly found themselves unable to comprehend what their
fellow-workers were trying to say to them, especially if they came from a different family line.
Thus they lost their ability to work together and had to abandon their great building project. It
was only natural that they should migrate from the Plain of Shinar (or Mesopotamia) and begin
to populate the rest of Asia, Europe, Africa, and so on, during the centuries preceding the call of
Abraham. Once again, even as before the Flood, the human race had failed to keep in covenant
relationship with the God who created them in His own image. Only a very few had remained
loyal to the faith of Noah.
As for 11:9, which seems to furnish an etymology for the name Babel, it should be understood
that this was the kind of wordplay which occurs in Scripture from time to time. For example,
Abigail said to David in 1 Sam. 25:25 concerning her boorish husband, Nabal: “He is just like
his name—his name is Fool (Nābāl), and folly goes with him.” It is however quite likely that his
parents would never have purposely named their baby boy “Fool,” but rather something more
positive. Arabic has the name Nabbālun, which means “Bowman,” and so it is quite likely that
that meaning was what they intended. It is in Hebrew that nābāl means “fool,” but not in the
language of their neighbors just south of Judah. Here then we have a hidden meaning derived
from Babel (Akkadian Bab-ili, “Gate of God”), and brought out of bābal, which means
“confuse.” Jastrow’s Dictionary of Talmudic Hebrew, p. 173, lists the pilpel stem balbēl as an
intensive with the same meaning of confusion, “mix up, confuse.” Needless to say, there is a
significant similarity between Babel and balbēl.
Thus it is a mistake to categorize this account as a late fanciful story without historical
foundation. It is important to note in recent times the testimony for this event is to be found in
the Sumerian culture as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur. Robert T. Boyd reports the discovery
of a ten by five foot stela erected by King Ur-Nammu which says concerning a certain ziggurat:
“The erection of this tower highly offended all the gods. In a night they threw down what man
had built and impeded their progress. They were scattered abroad and their speech was strange”
(Tells, Tombs and Treasures [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969], p. 78).

Abraham and Genesis 14

The archaeological confirmation of the historical trustworthiness of the Genesis account of

Abraham’s life has already been reviewed in chapter 13 (pp. 171–75). There it was shown: (1)
that the name Abram appears in cuneiform records of the first half of the second millennium B.C.;
(2) that both Ur and Haran were flourishing cities in the twenty-first century B.C.; (3) that
Shechem and Bethel (if Beitin is correctly identified as Bethel) were inhabited during that
period, and likewise that the Jordan Valley was highly populated; (4) that the names of the
invading kings listed in Gen. 14 were appropriate to that age, and travel from Mesopotamia to
Palestine was quite extensive, and Elamite power (suggested by the Elamite name
Chedorlaomer) was in the ascendancy at approximately the same time. (As for the Sodom-
Gomorrah Pentapolis, Ebla records refer to each as contemporary cities back in 2300 B.C., cf. p.
170 n. 5); (5) We noted that Abraham’s negotiations in purchasing the cave of Machpelah
conformed to Hittite law practiced in the second millennium. Unger (AOT, p. 107) and J. B.
Payne date the birth of Abraham in the twenty-second century, and his migration to Palestine in
the twenty-first (more precisely estimated by Payne as 2091, although Unger implies a few years
later), during the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2070–1960).
Since the name of Hammurabi was so long associated with that of Abraham, on the ground of his
supposed identity with Amraphel king of Shinar (Gen. 14:1), it is well to indicate the most recent
lines of evidence for 1770 B.C. as the midpoint in Hammurabi’s career. In an article in the
Journal of Near Eastern Studies (April 1958, p. 97), M. B. Rowton lists the data as follows: (1)
A piece of charcoal from a building in Nippur constructed several years before or after the
accession of lbi-Sin (a king of the Third Dynasty of Ur who preceded Hammurabi by 235 years)
yielded the radiocarbon date of 1992 B.C. plus-or-minus 106. This would mean a date for
Hammurabi of 1757 plus-or-minus 106 (Rowton’s dates for Hammurabi are 1792–50; cf. IDB
ii5l7 in 1958, JNES 4/58, p. 111). (2) Reed mats from the ziggurat (or stage tower) of Ur-
Nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, erected in Uruk (or else possibly in the reign of his
successor, Shulgi), yielded the radiocarbon date of 1868 plus-or-minus 133. This would place the
accession of Hammurabi in 1581 plus-or-minus 133. (3) The observation records kept for the
planet Venus in the reign of Ammizaduqa of Babylon (the fourth in succession after Hammurabi)
allow for three possible dates for Hammurabi’s accession: 1848, 1792, and 1728. Of these,
Rowton favors the second, 1792, on the basis of a statement by Tiglath-pileser I (whose dates are
1112–1074, according to P. E. van der Meer) that he had renovated a temple of Anu and Adad
701 years after it was built by Shamshi-Adad I, a contemporary of Hammurabi. This would
suggest a date of 1813 for the period of Hammurabi. These evidences tend to confirm the
synchronism of Zimri-Lim and Hammurabi mentioned in chapter 13 (p. 172), and establish the
dates of his reign during the eighteenth century (ca. 1792–1750)—far too late for Abraham. The
reference to “Dan” in 14:14 has been taken as evidence of a post-Mosaic date for Genesis. But
this name appears at least as early as Dynasty II (LD III, 211, 4) in Egyptian as Matu Dan-nu-na
(VAB II b 24) 211, (cf. Harris 76.7)—Burchardt, M: “Die Altkanuaixhe Fremdwuorteru und
Eigennamen im Aegyptischen,” Leipzig, 1909 II, p. 60.

Jacob and Laban, Genesis 31

It is interesting to observe in the case of Jacob, who had gone to work for Laban in the
Mesopotamian area by Padan-aram (Gen. 29:16–30), that there are parallels in the Nuzi
documents to the obligation which was laid upon Jacob to work for 7 years in order to earn the
right to marry Laban’s daughter. The Nuzi documents record that it was common for a man to
work for a specified length of time prior to receiving his wife from her father.
Furthermore, it is significant that there is a prohibition laid upon Jacob against marrying outside
of the family. Laban says to Jacob in Gen. 31:50, “If thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou
shalt take other wives beside my daughters, no man is with us; see God is witness between me
and you.” This prohibition, as stated by Laban, is again attested by a similar Nuzi custom in
which it was forbidden that a man should take another wife beside the one he originally labored
to obtain. Thus we see again that Nuzi documentation of the contemporary customs of the
Patriarchal period illustrates the reliability of the biblical record and illumines the practices
common to that day.

Joseph and the Hyksos

A tradition at least as old as the time of Josephus (ca. A.D. 90) states that a Hyksos dynasty was
ruling Egypt at the time Joseph rose to power as prime minister (or vizier) in Pharaoh’s court.
The Hyksos (a corruption of the Egyptian ḥeḳa˒u ḫaswet, or “rulers of foreign lands”) were a
somewhat heterogeneous horde of Asiatic invaders, largely of Semitic background, who
gradually infiltrated northern Egypt at first, and then took over the supreme power with an
irresistible progress which carried them well into southern Egypt. Capturing Memphis, they
made it their capital (along with Tanis or Avaris in the Delta), and established the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Dynasties. Manetho (ca. 250 B.C.) estimated their domination as lasting 500 years. But
more recent evidence indicates that their rule was hardly more than 150 years. They probably
began filtering into Egypt about 1900 B.C. and finally gained control by 1730.
According to the biblical chronology (assuming the correctness of a 1445 B.C. date for the
Exodus and adding a 430-year sojourn in Egypt), the probable date of Jacob’s migration into
Egypt during Joseph’s premiership was about 1875 B.C. This represents anywhere from 94 to 140
years before the rise of the Hyksos, and puts Joseph back in the period of the Twelfth Dynasty.
Obviously these factors exclude the possibility that Josephus’ tradition was reliable. It is
perfectly true that a bond of sympathy might have existed between the Hyksos and the Hebrews
because of their Canaanite language and Asiatic origin. The name of one of the earliest rulers as
reported by Manetho was Salitis, which bears a striking similarity to the Semitic shallɩ̄ṭ (“ruler”).
Semitic names were attached to a significant number of cities in northern Egypt, like Succoth
(Ex. 12:37), Baal-zephon (Ex. 14:2), Migdol (Ex. 14:2), and various others. (Baal was apparently
equated by them with the Egyptian Sutekh or Seth, the storm-god, and was adopted as patron god
of the Hyksos dynasties. Hence the place name Baal-zephon, “Lord of the North.”) Nevertheless
there are clear indications in the text of Genesis, and also in Ex. 1, that the Pharaoh who
welcomed Joseph was a native Egyptian and not a Semitic foreigner.
In the first place, the reigning Egyptian dynasty shows a nationalistic contempt for Asiatic
foreigners. When Joseph receives his brothers in his banquet room, he is compelled to seat them
by themselves, rather than as guests at his table. Genesis 43:32 states: “The Egyptians might not
eat bread with the Hebrews; for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” This could never
have been said of Hyksos rulers, for the base of their power was Syria and Palestine, from which
they had migrated, and in which they apparently retained power all during their period of
ascendancy in Egypt. Their attitude toward other Semitic immigrants and visitors to Egypt could
only have been cordial, rather than characterized by the race prejudice suggested in this verse.
In the second place, it is quite obvious that the sentiment of the Egyptian govemment in Joseph’s
time was strongly averse to shepherds. Genesis 46:34 states: “For every shepherd is an
abomination unto the Egyptians.” While this has been abundantly verified from the Egyptian
monuments (which frequently depict cattle but never sheep on their bas-reliefs), it could scarcely
have been true of the Hyksos, who were known to the later Egyptians as the “Shepherd-Kings”
(indeed Manetho so translates the name Hyksos itself, although erroneously). Hence it was a
native dynasty which was on the throne.25 It was therefore necessary for the sons of Jacob to
stress their possession of cattle and omit mention of their herds of sheep if they were to make a
favorable impression before Pharaoh (Gen. 46:31–34).
Third, as John Rea has pointed out, the first chapter of Exodus presents an array of data almost
irreconcilable with the usual supposition that the “new king who knew not Joseph” was an
Egyptian of the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Dynasty. Before considering these evidences, it would
be well to note that at the very commencement of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ahmose drove out all
the Hyksos population from Egypt (except for that which was put to the sword), pursuing them
even to their southern Palestinian fortress of Sharuhen. If, then, the Israelites were friends and
allies of the Hyksos (as is usually assumed), it is hard to see why they were not expelled with
them. On what basis did the nationalistic Egyptians under King Ahmose make a distinction
between the Hyksos and the Hebrews? Is it not obvious that the Israelites must have been
antagonistic to the Hyksos and favorable in their attitude toward the Egyptians during the long
period of Hyksos occupation?
Fourth, the statement of the Pharaoh reported in Ex. 1:8–10 is quite pointless in the mouth of a
native Egyptian. It would have been the grossest exaggeration to assert that the Israelites were
more numerous than the Egyptians, but it was quite possible that they could become more
numerous than the warrior caste of the Hyksos themselves. As for the king’s apprehension that
they might join up with enemies of the government in time of war, it is difficult to see what non-
Egyptians they might have leagued with, surrounded as they were by Egyptians in the isolated
pocket of Goshen. But if the speaker in this case was a Hyksos, there would be some point to an
apprehension that they might make common cause with the Egyptians, who after all had been so
cordial to them for Joseph’s sake. The probability is that the “new king who knew not Joseph”
was of the Hyksos dynasty, and it was he who put the Hebrews to work as slaves at his building
projects. (It would then appear that there was a policy of oppression and enslavement a few
decades after the expulsion of the Hyksos by the native Egyptian successor to Ahmose. Possibly
this later phase is introduced at Ex. 1:15 along with the command to the midwives to practice
infanticide.)
Fifth, in connection with this last detail, we have the evidence of the city of Raamses, mentioned
in Ex. 1:11. As the narrative is related in the Hebrew text, this forced labor at Raamses
(previously thought to be Tanis or Zoan, but, more likely shown to be Qantir, 12 miles south of
Tanis) took place before the birth of Moses (which is not mentioned until the next chapter). But
if the exodus took place around 1290 (as most modern scholars suppose), and if Moses was
eighty at that time, his birth took place in 1370, or a good sixty years before a Nineteenth
Dynasty Rameses ever sat on the throne of Egypt. Therefore it could not have been at a city
named after Rameses II (1299–1232 B.C.) that the Israelites worked (prior to the birth of Moses).
Furthermore, it is doubtful whether the city of Tanis (or Zoan or Avaris, as it is variously called)
could have been built during the Eighteenth Dynasty. G. E. Wright is quite positive in his report
in his Biblical Archaeology: “After much digging at Tanis by the archaeologists Marriette, Petrie
and Montet, not a single object of the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty has been found there. The
reason that Tanis was identified as the city of Raamses stemmed from the abundance of
cornerstones and monuments bearing his name located at that site. But, further investigation
revealed that many of these building units fit exactly into sockets or bases that were discovered
in Qantir. This indicates that the removal of the Ramesside material took place at a later time in
order to relocate the capital of that part of Egypt. But, originally the structures which were
transported to Tanis had been erected in Qantir (cf. Jack Finegan, Light From the Ancient Past
[Princeton: Princeton U., 1976], p. 115). The city was destroyed by Pharaoh Amenhotep (1570–
1546), and was probably not reoccupied before the fourteenth century.” Wright assumes that this
evidence points to a thirteenth-century date for the building of the store city of Raamses, but this
seems precluded by the fact that this activity was carried on before Moses was ever born,
perhaps a long time before. The only possibility left (assuming the accuracy of the Hebrew
record) is that it was the Hyksos who compelled the Israelites to task work at Pithom and
Raamses, and not the early Eighteenth Dynasty monarchs.
This, of course, raises the question how Tanis could ever have been called Raamses two or three
hundred years before the accession of Rameses himself. But there is some ground for believing
that Rameses is a name which could have been in vogue back in the Hyksos period. Note that
Gen. 47:11 speaks of “the land of Raamses” as the general area of Goshen, where Joseph settled
his relatives. This would indicate that the name was current long before Moses’ time. It is highly
significant that Seti I, the father of Rameses II, was named after Seth, the patron god of the
Hyksos dynasties, the god who was so abhorred by the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty. Albright
came to this conclusion: “The Ramesside house actually traced its ancestry back to a Hyksos
king whose era was fixed 400 years before the date commemorated in the ‘400-year Stela’ of
Tanis. The great-grandfather of Rameses II evidently came from an old Tanite family, very
possibly of Hyksos origin, since his name was Sethos (Suta).… Rameses II established his
capital and residency at Tanis, which he named ‘House of Rameses’ and where he built a great
temple of the old Tanite, later Hyksos, god Seth (pronounced at that time Sûtekh).” As Rea
points out, “If the Ramesside dynasty may be traced back to the Hyksos rulers, and if the
dynastic name Seti or Sethos is a Hyksos name, then it is equally possible that the name Ramese
or Raamses was a Hyksos name, or at least was used by them in Lower Egypt, where few records
from that period have been found.” It might be added that the name Rameses (Egyptian Ra˓ -
messu or Ra˓ -mesesu) literally means, “Begotten of Ra.” The sun-god Ra˓ or Re˓ (as it is
variously vocalized) was highly honored by the Hyksos as well as by the Egyptians themselves,
for many of their royal names end with his name.
It has been asserted that the mention of Joseph in Gen. 41:43 as parading down the streets of the
capital in Pharaoh’s chariot points to the period of the Hyksos, since the extensive use of chariots
in warfare was not known in Egypt prior to their invasion. Up until now there have been no
Egyptian bas-reliefs or murals discovered which represent the chariot prior to the Eighteenth
Dynasty. Nevertheless the two-wheeled chariot was used in Mesopotamia as early as the early
third millennium. (Cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1969 ed., 5:287.) The New Bible Dictionary (p.
204) shows a drawing of a copper model of a chariot drawn by four onagers from the Early
Dynastic Period (ca. 2500 B.C.) from Tell Agrab. This article states: “Heavy wheeled vehicles
drawn by asses were used for war and ceremonial in southern Mesopotamia in the third
millennium B.C.” Since monuments from Ur witness to the use of the chariot there, the fact that
Byblos in Phoenicia was under the domination of Ur during the twentieth century (its ruler being
called by the Sumerian title ensi) takes on special significance, During the Middle Kingdom
(Joseph’s period) the power of Egypt was once again extended to Byblos, and it is difficult to
imagine how the discovery of the Mesopotamian chariot could have been kept from the
Egyptians themselves. We do not need to infer that the chariot was widely used as a branch of
the armed forces during the Twelfth Dynasty, but it remains quite conceivable, and even likely,
that the king himself might have had ceremonial chariots constructed for official occasions at this
early period. Its usefulness in warfare may not have been appreciated until after the Hyksos
invasions, but it could hardly have been unknown to Egypt in the nineteenth century B.C.

16
Exodus
THE HEBREW TITLE of Exodus is Weēlleh shemōt (“And these are the names of”), or more
simply shemōt, (“the names of”), derived from the opening words of Ex. 1:1. The Septuagint
title, Exodos (“exit, departure”), is the origin of the Vulgate’s term Exodus. The theme of the
book is the commencement of Israel as a covenant nation. It relates how God fulfilled His
ancient promise to Abraham by multiplying his descendants into a great nation, redeeming them
from the land of bondage, and renewing the covenant of grace with them on a national basis. At
the foot of the holy mountain, He bestows on them the promises of the covenant and provides
them with a rule of conduct by which they may lead a holy life, and also with a sanctuary in
which they may make offerings for sin and renew fellowship with Him on the basis of forgiving
grace.

Outline of Exodus

I. Training of God’s man for God’s task, 1:1–4:31

A. Moses’ background: tyrannical persecution, 1:1–22
B. His adoption and early education, the first forty years, 2:1–14
C. His character disciplined, the second forty years, 2:15–25
D. His call from God at Horeb, 3:1–4:31
II. Triumphant grace: God’s people delivered from bondage, 5:1–18:27
A. God’s triumph over the world power through the ten plagues, 5:1–11:10
B. Six types of salvation, 12:1–18:27
1. Passover: Calvary symbolized and appropriated, 12:1–13:22
2. Red Sea crossing: the plunge of faith (baptism), 14:1–15:27
3. Manna from heaven: the bread of life (Eucharist), 16:1–36
4. The cleft rock: the water of life, 17:1–7
5. Rephidim: foretaste of victory over the world, 17:8–16
 6. Appointment of elders: organization for religious fellowship, 18:1–27
III. Seal of holiness, 19:1–31:18
A. Covenant promise: absolute submission to God’s revealed will, as “a holy nation, a
peculiar people,” 19:1–25
B. Basic principles of a holy life under the covenant; the Decalogue, 20:1–26
C. Holy living in one’s conduct toward others (Book of the Covenant); the three great
festivals, 21:1–23:33
D. Holy living in worship and fellowship with God (the types of priesthood, sacrifice, and the
tabernacle furniture), 24:1–31:18
IV. Failure of the flesh and repentance for sin, 32:1–33:23
A. Rebellion, apostasy, idolatry: fellowship broken with God, 32:1–35
B. Repentance, chastisement, and intercession by Moses the mediator, 33:1–23
V. God’s provision for sin: continuing forgiveness through sacrifice, 34:1–40:38
A. Reaffirmation of the covenant of grace and God’s warnings against idolatry, 34:1–35
B. Means of grace to prevent backsliding: Sabbath and Tabernacle, 35:1–19
C. Congregation’s pledge to carry out God’s plan, 35:20–39:43
D. Forms of worship accepted and hallowed by the Lord, 40:1–38

From this outline it is apparent that the book was composed and arranged by a single mind, and
that it was not a clumsy patchwork of three different sources assembled over a period of four
centuries, as the Documentary Hypothesis asserts. The logical order in the arrangement of each
part and the consistent adherence to the great central theme bespeak the skill of a single, highly
gifted author

The Early History of Moses

Several matters pertaining to the book of Exodus have already been discussed in earlier chapters.
The probable identification of the “pharaoh who knew not Joseph” with the Hyksos dynasty has
been explained at the close of chapter 15. lf this hypothesis is accepted, it would be most
reasonable to see in Ex. 1:15–22 a reference to resumed persecution under Amenhotep I (l559–
1539 B.C.) and Thutmose I (1539–1514 B.C.), in whose reigns the growing antiforeign sentiment
of the Egyptian populace finally turned against the Hebrews (even though they too had been
oppressed by the hated Hyksos). During the reign of Thutmose I, then, Moses was born (about
1527), and received from the princess who adopted him (perhaps Hatshepsut) the name Moses
“son of the water,” Egyptian; “drawing out,” Hebrew). As to this Egyptian etymology mw-s or
“water-son,” it is true that usually a possessive idea is expressed in Egyptian by “A of B,” or in
this case, “s mw.” But in the case of proper names, the Egyptians also reversed the order
occasionally, as in The Tale of Sinuhe, where Enshi, son of Amu, is referred to as “Amu-sa;
Enshi.” Or again, in the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant (likewise a Middle Kingdom work), Rensi
the son of Meru is called “Mer-u-sa; Rensi.” As for the often suggested etymology of “Mose” for
Moses, understood as a shortened form of Ra’mosse (Rameses) or Thutmose (“begotten of
Thoth”), this would be a perfectly acceptable alternative if it were not for Ex. 2:10, which
implies that the name which the princess bestowed on the baby had some relevance, even in
Egyptian, to the circumstances of his discovery at the riverbank. Of course there remains the
possibility that the true antecedent of “she” in Ex. 2:10 was not the Egyptian princess but rather
the mother of Moses, who had been hired to be the baby’s nurse. This would eliminate all need
for an Egyptian etymology. But this would also presuppose that Moses’ mother had not already
named him at his circumcision, and that it was the mother who had drawn him out of the water
rather than the princess, and lastly that it was the mother who had the prerogative of naming him,
rather than his new royal fostermother. These three assumptions seem rather difficult to maintain
in the light of all the circumstances, and so it is best to abide by the Egyptian etymology
suggested above.

The Length of the Sojourn in Egypt

As to the length of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, the clear statement of the Hebrew text
of Ex. 12:40 is that it totaled 430 years from the migration of Jacob’s family until the Exodus
itself. But since the LXX here reads that the 430 years included the sojourn of Abraham and his
descendants in Canaan as well as Egypt, some have preferred this variant to the reading of the
Masoretic Text. This would result in an Egyptian sojourn of about 215 years, and would bring
Joseph’s career squarely into the Hyksos period. But there are several considerations which
render the 215-year interval very unlikely.
In the first place, a prediction was made to Abraham in Gen. 15:16 that after oppression in a
foreign land, his descendants would return to Canaan “in the fourth generation.” This follows
shortly after verse 13, which states that the foreign oppressors “shall afflict them four hundred
years.” It is evident that in Abraham’s case, a generation was computed at one hundred years,
and this was appropriate enough in view of the fact that Abraham was precisely one hundred
when he became the father of Isaac. At least four centuries, then, and not a mere 215 years,
would mark the Israelite Sojourn in the foreign land.
Second, although many of the family lines of prominent figures in the Exodus generation are
indicated by only three or four links (e.g., Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses, according to Ex. 6:16–
20), there are some which feature as many as ten generations. Kitchen (AOOT, 54–57) points out
that conformable to general ancient Near Eastern practice, “Ex. 6:16–20 is not a full genealogy,
but only gives the tribe (Levi), clan (Kohath), and family group (Amran by Jochabed) to which
Moses and Aaron belonged and not their actual parents. The Amramites are shown as being
already numerous at the Exodus (cf. Num. 3:27–28), so Amram must be considered as having
lived much earlier.” In 1 Chron. 7:25 there are no less than nine or ten generations listed between
Joseph and Joshua (Ephraim-Rephah-Resheph-Telah-Tahan-Ladan-Ammihud-Elishama-Nun-
Joshua). Ten generations can hardly be reconciled with a mere 215 years (especially considering
the longer life span of pre-Exodus Israelites), but it fits in very plausibly with an interval of 430
years. Similarly, Bezaleel is in the seventh generation from Jacob (1 Chron. 2:1, 4, 5, 9, 18–21),
Elishama is in the ninth generation from Jacob (Num. 1:10), and Nahshon, prince of Judah, is in
the sixth generation after Jacob (1 Chron. 2:1, 4, 5, 9, 10). Compare also the genealogy of Ezra
as set forth in Ezra 7:1–5 which indicates no less than seventeen generation links between Ezra
and Aaron. If Ezra is dated at 457 B.C., seventeen generations would readily take us back to the
15th century, the time of Aaron.
Third, the increase from seventy or seventy-five persons in the immigrant family of Jacob to a
nation of more than two million souls (judging from the 603,550 men-at-arms mentioned in
Num. 2:32) militates against a mere 215-year sojourn. If there were indeed only four generations
then the rate of multiplication would necessarily have been astronomic. Even if seven
generations should be crammed into the 215 years, there would have had to be an average of four
surviving sons per father. But if the Sojourn lasted 430 years, then the desired multiplication
would result from an average of three sons and three daughters to every married couple during
the first six generations, and an average of two sons and two daughters in the last four
generations. At this rate, by the tenth generation there would be (according to Delitzsch,
Pentateuch, 2:30) 478,224 sons above twenty by the four-hundredth year of the sojourn, while
125,326 males of military age would still be left over from the ninth generation. These together,
then, would total 603,550 men-at-arms.

The Date of the Exodus

According to 1 Kings 6:1 the temple of Solomon was begun in the fourth year of his reign (i.e.,
966 or shortly thereafter), which was the four hundred and eightieth year after the Exodus. This
would give the exact date for the Exodus as 1445 B.C., in the third year of Amenhotep II (1447–
1421). There may have been a few years more or less, if the figure of 480 was only meant to be a
round number. This would mean that the Israelite conquest of Canaan would have commenced
with the destruction of Jericho around 1405 (allowing for the forty years in the wilderness). This
latter date has been confirmed by John Garstang’s excavations at the site of Jericho, Tell es-
Sultan, from 1930 to 1936. On archaeological grounds he dated the Late-Bronze level (City D) at
1400 B.C.
Further confirmation of this date is found in the statement of Jephthah recorded in Judg. 11:26,
where he reminds the Ammonite invaders that the Israelites have been too long in possession of
the contested land of Gilead for the Ammonites to challenge their legal right to hold it: “While
Israel dwelt in Heshbon and its towns, and in Aroer and its towns … three hundred years;
wherefore did ye not recover them within that time?” (ASV). Since Jephthah’s period was
admittedly earlier than the time of King Saul (whose reign began around 1050 B.C.), this
certainly pushes the Israelite conquest back to 1400 B.C.
Still further confirmation is found in Paul’s comment in Acts 13:19–20, which according to the
earliest reading (as preserved in Nestle’s text) states: “And when he [God] had destroyed seven
nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land for an inheritance, for about four hundred
and fifty years: and after these things [i.e., after the division of the land] he gave them judges
until Samuel the prophet.” (This is the rendering of the RSV; the KJV follows a later,
untrustworthy reading here.) In other words, the interval includes the Exodus itself (when the
Hebrews left Egypt to take possession of Canaan, Ex. 20:12), the Israelite conquest under
Joshua, and the career of Samuel down to the date of David’s capture of Jerusalem ca. 995. (Cf.
Deut. 12:10, which states that the choice of a holy city for Jehovah’s sanctuary will be revealed
after “He giveth you rest from all your enemies”—including apparently, the Jebusites in
Jerusalem.) This means that the 450 years of Acts 13 includes the period from 1445 to 995 B.C. It
goes without saying that a materially later date for the Exodus would be utterly irreconcilable
with Acts 13:19.
But notwithstanding this consistent testimony of Scripture to the 1445 date (or an approximation
thereof), the preponderance of scholarly opinion today is in favor of a considerably later date, the
most favored one at present being 1290 B.C., or about ten years after Rameses II began to reign.
A still later date, ca. 1225, is favored by a diminishing number of authorities (such as H. H.
Rowley), but in the earlier decades of the twentieth century it found support even from
conservatives like M. G. Kyle in ISBE (who dated the fifth year of Merneptah about 1250 B.C.)
and J. D. Davis (who dated the fifth year in his Dictionary of the Bible, 4th ed., as 1320).
J. Finegan lists five major arguments in support of the 1290 date: (1) the discrepancies between
the Amarna Letters and the Hebrew record (in Joshua, Judges, Samuel); (2) the apparent absence
of an agricultural civilization in Edom, Moab, and Ammon during the fourteenth century; (3) the
impossibility of reconciling a 430-year sojourn with a Hyksos date for Joseph’s career; (4) the
lack of evidence that Thutmose III did any building in the Delta region; (5) the mention of the
city of Raamses in Ex. 1:11 These will be dealt with one by one.
As to (1), Finegan points to the fact that the letters from King Abdi-Hepa of Canaanite Jerusalem
in the Amarna correspondence’ indicate that his city was in imminent danger of capture by the
Habiru; yet 2 Sam. 5:6–9 shows that the Israelites did not capture Jerusalem until David’s reign.
Hence the Habiru could not have been the Israelites, but an earlier, non-Israelite force of
invaders. But the fallacy in this argument is obvious. The armies of Joshua did indeed menace
Jerusalem, for they routed the Jerusalemite troops (together with their allies from Hebron,
Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon) at the battle of Gibeon, and their king, Adoni-zedek, was
subsequently flushed out of hiding and put to death (Josh. 10). But neither the letters of Abdi-
Hepa nor the Hebrew account in Joshua states that the city itself was captured or destroyed. Not
until after Joshua’s death, apparently, did the army of Judah storm Jerusalem and put it to the
torch (Judg. 1:8), and even then they did not permanently dispossess the Jebusites (Judg. 1:21).
As to (2), Finegan refers to the surveys of Nelson Glueck in the Transjordanian region, which
failed to uncover any evidence of urban civilization or fortifications between 1900 and 1300 B.C.
This means that there could have been no strong Edomite kingdom to oppose the Israelite
advance up the east bank of the Dead Sea (cf. Num. 20:14–21) back in 1405 B.C. Nor would
there have been any strong Moabite-Midianite coalition to face under King Balak (Num. 22–25),
nor any armies of Sihon and Og to crush (Num. 21). But Glueck’s investigations were largely in
the nature of surface exploration, and could hardly have been called thorough. Moreover, there
has come to light more recently a new line of evidence which seems to belie his deductions. In
the Biblical Archaeologist for February 1953, G. Lankester Harding reported the discovery of an
ancient tomb in Amman (BA XVI, no. 7: “Archaeological News from Jordan”) containing
numerous artifacts (including black pricked ware, button-base vases, oil flasks, scarabs, and
toggle pins) dating from about 1600 B.C. In Harding’s Antiquities of Jordan (1959) he also
speaks of characteristic Middle Bronze pottery and other objects found at Naur and Mount Nebo.
A sixteenth century tomb was discovered at Pella in 1967 (ASOR newsletter, Dec. 1967). A Late
Bronze Age temple was uncovered under a runway at the Amman airport in 1955 (CT, 22 Dec.
1971, p. 26). Franken’s excavations at Deir Alla and those of Siegfried Horn at Heshbon have
shown that the pottery of Transjordan was quite dissimilar from that produced on the west bank
of the Jordan at the same period. Yamauchi suggests that Glueck mistakenly assumed the
homogeneity of pottery from both regions and thus may have introduced confusion into his
interpretation of the data (ibid. See H. J. Franken and W. J. A. Power [VT, xxi 71, pp. 119–23];
“Glueck’s Exploration in Eastern Palestine in the Light of Recent Evidence”). J. Bimson states,
“I am forced to conclude, therefore, that there is no reason to date the Conquest in the 12th
century B.C. Evidence from et-Tell does not support such a date, since it is not clear that there
was a deliberate destruction of the Iron Age village at that time” (Redating the Exodus and
Conquest, p. 65). Further excavation will no doubt uncover more products of this intermediate
period and demonstrate once again the fallacy of hasty conclusions on the basis of superficial
investigations.
As to (3), the difficulty of reconciling the viziership of Joseph with the Hyksos period in Egypt
(since Joseph’s career must have fallen in the first half of the nineteenth century according to the
early date theory, and the Hyksos rule did not begin until 1730 or so), this discrepancy is freely
admitted. But as has been already pointed out, the internal evidence of Ex. 1 points to the Hyksos
dynasty as furnishing the “new king who knew not Joseph,” and the Twelfth Dynasty as being
the probable time of Joseph’s career. Therefore the point taken raises no difficulty whatsoever to
a 1445 date for the Exodus.
As to (4), the lack of evidence of building activity in the Delta during the reign of Thutmose III
(l501–1447), there are several significant indications from archaeological discovery which point
in a more positive direction. It is a well-known fact that Thutmose III erected two red granite
obelisks in front of the temple of Ra’ in Heliopolis (situated at the base of the Delta); one of
them now stands in London and the other in New York City. Since he describes himself in them
as “Lord of Heliopolis,” it is fair to assume that he did conduct building operations in that city.
Moreover, a scarab from the Eighteenth Dynasty refers to the birth of Amenhotep II (Thutmose’s
son) as having taken place in Memphis (twenty-three miles below Heliopolis). This raises a
strong presumption that Thutmose maintained his headquarters there from time to time, at least,
and probably did so for the purpose of strengthening his fortifications and staging preparations
for his numerous Asiatic campaigns. It is inconceivable that he could have made fourteen or
more campaigns in Syria if he had not built extensive barracks, depots, and other structures to
accommodate his troops. The land of Goshen with its large reservoir of manpower must have
often been commandeered for these construction projects. Even as far south as Thebes, the tomb
of his vizier Rekhmire shows Semitic slaves hard at work making and transporting bricks.
As for Amenhotep II, discoveries at Bubastis (the Pi-beseth of Ezek. 30:17) uncovered by
Naville in 1887–1889 included a red granite slab representing Amenhotep in worship before
Amon-Ra’, “he who dwells in Perwennefer.” This calls to mind the close relationship which
Amenhotep bore to the naval dockyard at Perwennefer near Memphis, over which his father had
appointed him a commandant in his youth. W C. Hayes concludes that he maintained large
estates at Perwennefer, and resided there for extended periods of time. In one inscription (ANET,
p. 244) he speaks of riding from the royal stables in Memphis to visit the Sphinx at Gizeh. All
this points to frequent royal residence in the Delta during the reign of Thutmose III (the pharaoh
of the oppression) and Amenhotep II (the pharaoh of the Exodus)—conformable to the early date
theory.
In regard to (5), the appeal to the treasure city of Raamses in Ex. 1:11, “we have seen that there
is no possibility of reconciling the Mosaic narrative as it now stands, with a 1290 date.” This
labor upon the city of Raamses must have been carried on prior to the birth of Moses, unless the
Ex. 1:15 account is out of chronological sequence and the name “Raamses” was an anachronism
(and the strength of this whole argument is that this name was not an anachronism). Yet between
1300, the approximate date of the accession of Rameses II to the throne, and the year 1290 there
is no room for the eighty years of Moses’ life prior to the event of the Exodus itself. Therefore
the 1290 date cannot be seriously considered as a theory reconcilable with the accuracy of the
Hebrew account. Actually the prime advocates of this view do not, as a rule, hold to the
reliability of the Mosaic narrative, but (as in the case of Meek and Albright) deny that the Joseph
tribes (Ephraim and Manasseh) ever sojoumed in Egypt, but rather the Levites alone, or possibly
the tribe of Judah also.
On the strength of the Israel stela of Merneptah the adherents of the 1290 date have rightly urged
that the Israelites must already have been settled in Palestine at least by 1229 B.C., and that this
makes it very difficult to hold the older theory that Merneptah (1234–1225) was the pharaoh of
the Exodus. It is a necessary inference from the Merneptah stela that Israel was already in
Palestine, dwelling among the Hittites, Ashkelon, Gezer, and the Horites (11.26ff.). Kyle’s
suggestion (in the ISBE article on the Exodus) that “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not” refers to
the program of killing off the male babies of Israel eighty years before, while still enslaved in
Egypt, is hardly worth serious consideration.
The presence of the Hebrew nation in Palestine by 1229 (or the fifth year of Merneptah) carries
with it certain significant consequences. If the scriptural record of forty years’ wandering in the
wilderness be correct, then the Israelites could not possibly have left Egypt after 1269 B.C., or in
the thirtieth year (approximately) of Rameses II. The Hebrew text implies that Moses was absent
in Midian and Horeb at least thirty years, more probably forty. Compare Ex. 7:7, which states
that he was eighty at the time of the Exodus, and Acts 7:23, which states that he was about forty
when he slew the Egyptian. In other words, Rameses II could barely have ascended the throne
when this incident took place and Moses had to flee from Egypt; more likely it would have
occurred before Rameses’ accession. But the clear implication of Ex. 4:19 (“Go, return into
Egypt; for all the men are dead which sought thy life”) is that the king who sought Moses’ life
had but recently died. The whole tenor of the narrative in Ex. 2 leads us to expect that it was the
pharaoh of 1:22 who after “many days” passed away in 2:23. Whether this was the case, there is
the greatest improbability that Merneptah’s raid would have met with success against the
triumphant Israelites under General Joshua in 1229 just as they were first entering the promised
land. It is far more likely that the Egyptian expedition would have taken place after the initial
phase of the conquest was over. This would push the Exodus back at least to the 1290 date, and
make it utterly hopeless for Rameses II (who reigned from about 1300 to 1234) to serve as the
“pharaoh of the oppression.” Moses could not have spent forty years in exile during the ten years
between 1300 and 1290; yet it was evidently that same king who had sought Moses’ life who
“after many days” had died.
No other known pharaoh fulfills all the specifications besides Thutmose III. He alone, besides
Rameses II, was on the throne long enough (fifty-four years, including the twenty-one years of
Hatshepsut’s regency) to have been reigning at the time of Moses’ flight from Egypt, and to pass
away not long before Moses’ call at the burning bush, thirty or forty years later. In character he
was ambitious and energetic, launching no less than seventeen military campaigns in nineteen
years, and engaging in numerous building projects for which he used a large slave-labor task
force. His son, Amenhotep II, who doubtless hoped to equal his father’s military prowess, seems
to have suffered some serious reverse in his military resources, for he was unable to carry out
any invasions or extensive military operations after his fifth year (1445 B.C.) until the modest
campaign of his ninth year (according to Memphis stela, at least—the chronology of this reign is
a bit confused). This relative feebleness of his war effort (by comparison with that of his father)
would well accord with a catastrophic loss of the flower of his chariotry in the waters of the Red
Sea during their vain pursuit of the fleeing Israelites.
In further confirmation of Amenhotep II as the pharaoh of the Exodus we have the “Dream
Stela” of Thutmose IV (1421–1412), his son and successor. Although Adolf Erman demonstrated
quite convincingly that the inscription itself comes from a later period (Sitzungsberichte der
koniglichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904), nevertheless there can be little
doubt that it represents faithfully the substance and much of the actual wording of an authentic
inscription set up by Thutmose himself in the fifteenth century. Apparently the older stela had
been seriously damaged and was copied (as well as its condition would allow) in a later century,
when once again the sand was removed from the Sphinx at Gizeh. In this text the god Har-em-
akht (“Horus in the horizon”), in whose honor the Sphinx was thought to be made, appears to
young Thutmose in a dream while the latter was a mere prince in his father’s household. He
promises him the throne of Egypt upon the implied condition that he will remove the sand from
the Sphinx. It is quite obvious that if Thutmose IV had at that time been the oldest son of his
father, Amenhotep II, there would have been no need for a divine promise that he should some
day become king. He would naturally have succeeded to the throne if he simply survived his
father. It is a necessary inference, therefore, that the oldest son of Amenhotep must have later
predeceased his father, thus leaving the succession to his younger brother Thutmose IV. This
well accords with the record in Ex. 12:29 that the eldest son of pharaoh died at the time of the
tenth plague.
But even more conclusive than this is the situation in Goshen during the reign of Thutmose III as
compared to that which existed under Rameses II. In the time of Rameses, some of his main
building activity was right in the region of Wadi Tumilat, or Goshen, and this meant that
Egyptians must have been living all around this region and in the midst of it as well. But the
details of the plagues of flies, of hail, and of darkness (Ex. 8:22; 9:25–26; 10:23) make it clear
enough that Goshen was at the time of the Exodus inhabited almost exclusively by the Hebrews,
and plagues which befell the rest of Egypt made no appearance at all in Goshen. So far as we can
tell from the archaeological evidence presently at hand, there were no Egyptians living there
during the reign of Thutmose.
We come now to a consideration of the date when the Late Bronze or Canaanite city of Jericho
(City D in Garstang’s survey) met with destruction. John Garstang, who did the most extensive
excavation at this celebrated site, came to the conclusion that this destruction took place around
1400 B.C. In the burial grounds belonging to this level, Garstang found numerous scarabs, but
none of them later than two bearing the name of Amenhotep III (1412–1376). Moreover out of
more than 150,000 fragments of pottery found within the city itself, only one piece was found
which was of the Mycenean type. Yet Mycenean ware began to be imported into Palestine in
increasing abundance from 1400 onward. The archaeological criteria for the reign of
Amenhotep’s successor, Amenhotep IV or Akhnaton (1376–1362), are distinctive, plentiful, and
well established; but the Jericho evidence did not include a single fragment characteristic of his
reign.
Garstang also described the outer walls of this city as having been constructed of large, heavy
stone, and observed that they had toppled outward, as if by a violent earthquake. There is
considerable doubt, however, as to whether those walls belonged to this Late Bronze city or to an
earlier one, for more recent excavation by Kathleen Kenyon indicates the presence of Middle
Bronze sherds in the earth fill between the inner and outer layer of this rampart. Yet there is no
reason why a wall built in the Middle Bronze II period might not still have been in use by Late
Bronze times, ca. 1400 B.C.
Although many have objected to Garstang’s early date for the destruction of Jericho, their
objections have largely been influenced by subjective preference for a later date (a preference
partially based upon the time of the destruction of Lachish, Bethel, and Debir in the thirteenth
century). In reply to such criticisms, Garstang wrote in the preface (p. xiv) to his 1948 Story of
Jericho: “We are aware that varying opinions have appeared in print which conflict with our
interpretation of the date of the fall of Jericho about 1400 B.C. Few such opinions are based on
first-hand knowledge of the scientific results of our excavations; while many of them are devoid
of logical reasoning, or are based upon preconceptions as to the date of the Exodus. No
commentator has yet produced from the results of our excavations, which have been fully
published in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology, any evidence that City IV remained in being
after the reign of Amenhotep III.… We see no need therefore to discuss the date as though it
were a matter for debate.”
One specious objection which is sometimes raised to the 1400 date for the fall of Jericho is
derived from the mention of iron implements found in it, according to Josh. 6:24. The argument
runs as follows: 1400 falls within the Late Bronze Age; since iron was used in Jericho, its fall
must have occurred during the Iron Age (which began in the thirteenth century). But it does not
necessarily follow that iron was unknown during the Late Bronze Age; it might simply be that it
was in such short supply that bronze had to be used by most people in most places. This is borne
out by the fact that Josh. 6:24 speaks of the iron “vessels” in the same breath with articles of gold
and silver; therefore we may legitimately infer at that time iron may have been scarce and
expensive. Actually we know that iron was well known as early as Sumerian times, and the
Semitic word for “iron” (barzel, Hebrew; parzillu, Akkadian) may even have been of Sumerian
origin, since the Sumerian spelling for the word is ö˓AN.BAR. This indicates a knowledge and
use of iron in the Mesopotamian Valley at least as early as the twentieth century B.C.
Furthermore, iron objects have actually been found at Tell Asmar dating from about 2500 B.C.,
and also at Dorah in northwestern Turkey from about the same period there was discovered an
iron-bladed sword with an obsidian hilt.21
Perhaps the most serious difficulty with the 1445 theory is to be found in the dates which are
presently assigned to the destruction of some of the other cities which Joshua’s forces are said to
have captured, such as Lachish (Josh. 10:32), and Debir (Josh. 10:38). At Lachish (Tell ed-
Duweir), the Late Bronze city seems to have been leveled in the reign of Merneptah (1234–
1225), for there was found there not only a scarab of Rameses II but also some receipt ostraca
with the notation, “Year four.” The style of script is believed to be characteristic of Merneptah’s
time, and this might therefore indicate the date 1230 B.C., although this inference is scarcely
compelling.
As for Debir or Kirjath-sepher, identified with Tell Beit Mirsim, a scarab was found of
Amenhotep III (1412–1376), Finegan (LAP, p. 140) cites no other evidence than this for his
assumption that the layer of ashes upon the Late Bronze layer represents a destruction shortly
before 1200 B.C. As for the destruction of Ai, described in Joshua 8, this was explained by
Albright and his followers as a confusion with Bethel, since on archaeological grounds the site of
Ai (Et-Tell) is said not to have been occupied at all between 2200 B.C. and a brief village
settlement sometime between 1200 and 1000 B.C. (Finegan, LAP, pp. 136–37). But Bethel, a
mile and a half away, was destroyed by a tremendous conflagration some time in the thirteenth
century, and the fact that Joshua makes no mention of the capture of Bethel lends color to the
belief that it was confused with Ai.
There are several observations to be made concerning these three sites. In the first place, Josh.
10:32 says nothing about the physical destruction of the city of Lachish. (Tell el-Hesi, wrongly
identified by Petrie and Bliss with Lachish, has now been tentatively equated with Eglon;
therefore its destruction-level is irrelevant to the date of the Exodus [ASOR Newsletter, April
1970, p. 3—J. E. Worrell]); Josh. 10:32 only speaks of the slaughter of its inhabitants. The
devastation dating from 1230 B.C. may represent a later assault in the time of the Judges after the
depopulated city had been reoccupied upon the departure of Joshua’s troops. The same
observation also applies to the destruction of Debir; Josh. 10:38 says nothing about leveling the
walls or putting the city to the torch. Moreover, the evidence cited by Finegan seems to confirm
the early date theory as much as the 1290 date, since Amenhotep III was on the throne during the
1400 entry of Canaan by the Israelites. As for the question of Ai, the identification with Bethel
seems more tenuous, for Bethel was a hallowed and well-known religious center to the Hebrews
from the time of Jacob onward, and it is most unlikely that they would ever have confused its
location with that of Ai. In fact, this theory is quite untenable in view of Josh. 7:2, which states
explicitly that Ai was on the east side of Bethel. The ancient historian would hardly have
confused Bethel with an Ai which did not then exist as an inhabited site in the fourteenth or
thirteenth century. If “Ai” was really Bethel, then what was the “Bethel” mentioned in Josh. 7:2?
It is more reasonable to assume that Et-Tell is not the true site of Ai, and that we must look to
further exploration to discover the true location. The date of Bethel’s destruction is therefore
quite irrelevant to the dating of the Exodus.24
One final problem attaching to the early date theory of the Exodus has to do with the complete
silence of Judges concerning the Palestinian expeditions of Seti I and Rameses II. If these
invasions actually took place and the territory of Canaan was actually subjected to the Egyptian
power after the Israelite conquest had taken place, why are the Egyptians not mentioned along
with all the other oppressors? If lesser powers like the Moabites, Ammonites, North Canaanites,
and Philistines were mentioned, why were the Egyptians completely omitted during the interval
between 1370 and 1050 (when Saul began to reign)? But if the Exodus actually took place in
1290 and the Conquest in 1250, there would be no silence to explain away, for the Israelites
would not have entered upon the scene until after Rameses’ conquests, the year 1279 marking
the signing of his famous nonaggression pact with the Hittites.
In reply to this persuasive argument, it should first of all be pointed out that neither the 1290 date
nor the 1230 date accounts for the failure of Judges to mention the invasion of Merneptah
aforementioned (see p. 244). The same is true of the expeditions of Rameses III (1204–1172
B.C.) in Palestine. Yet this noteworthy monarch of the Twentieth Dynasty boasts in his
inscriptions of having reduced both the Tjeker (Palestinians) and the Philistines to ashes (ANET,
p. 262), and his bas-reliefs show him on his victorious progress to Djahi (the Phoenician
coastline) to do further exploits. Monuments from his reign were discovered in the excavation of
Beth-shan, at the eastern end of the plain of Esdraelon. How are we to explain this complete
silence about Rameses III? Certainly not by the late date theory of the Exodus; for even
according to that method of reckoning, the reign of Rameses III would have occurred in the time
of the Judges. The only possible inference is that the Hebrew record did not see fit to mention
these Egyptian invasions which took place after the Conquest. But if this was indisputably true of
the incursions of two pharaohs (Merneptah and Rameses III), why may it not have been true of
the two others (Seti I and Rameses II)? Also it is possible that the Hebrews did not mention the
Egyptians because the two had little or no contact. The Egyptians were most active along the
coastal plain of the Mediterranean, which the Hebrews seldom held. Primarily the Hebrews
occupied the hills of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
Second, it is possible to work out a fairly satisfactory synchronism between the Egyptian history
of the Nineteenth Dynasty and the earlier period of the Judges. Garstang has advanced the
interesting theory that the periods of “rest” referred to in Judges were times of Egyptian
supremacy, but that the Hebrew historian purposely avoided mentioning the Egyptians as such
because of an inveterate antipathy to a nation which had so cruelly oppressed his ancestors in
Goshen. Periods of oppression, then, came when Egyptian power in Canaan was weak and the
tribes of the area became restive, oppressing Israel.
On this view (which is essentially embraced by Unger and Payne) the oppression by Cushan-
Rishathaim of Aram-of-the-Two-Rivers represented a Hittite advance (the Hittites having
subdued North Mesopotamia by that time), which took place during the reign of Tutankhamen
(Unger) or Amenhotep III (Payne). The eighty years’ peace following the assassination of Eglon
by Ehud (Judg. 3:12–30) coincided in part with the pacification of the land by Seti I in 1318,
followed by the long reign of Rameses II. The quiet period ensuing upon Barak’s victory over
Sisera (ca. 1223–1183 according to Payne) may have been facilitated by the strong rule of
Rameses III (1204–1172). Garstang suggests that the “hornet” which is to drive out the
Canaanites before the Hebrews (according to Ex. 23:28; Deut. 7:20; Josh. 24:12) is a covert
reference to the Egyptian power, since the bee or hornet was the symbol of pharaoh as king of
Lower Egypt in the hieroglyphic spelling of that title (b ty in Egyptian). This is somewhat
dubious, however, on exegetical grounds. But the fact remains that the early date theory does
permit easy synchronism between the periods in Judges and the known sequence of events in
Egyptian history. (The late date theory, on the other hand, makes complete nonsense of the
chronology of the book of Judges.) An additional factor which favors a 1445 Exodus is found in
the Amama Letters.

The Covenant and the Decalogue

In Ex. 19:3–8 the covenant with Abraham and his seed (Gen. 12, 15, 17) was renewed with his
descendants, now that they had become a great nation. At the foot of the holy mountain, Israel
permanently committed itself to be of the Lord’s people, and a holy (set-apart-for-Him) people,
whose national goal—unlike the self-seeking of all other nations—was to be sincere and to give
complete obedience to His will, walking in fellowship with Him, and making Him the object of
their highest loyalty and love. “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do” (v. 8). Anything less
than this would have amounted to a purposeful withholding of complete obedience. It certainly
was not intended (as some have supposed) to be a choice in favor of self-justification by
performance of the deeds of the law. Grace reigned supreme in this Sinaitic covenant just as truly
as it did in the Abrahamic. The whole body of the law which was revealed to Moses and his
people from this point on was a testament of grace, although mediated through a different
economy from that of the Gospel (in which the Antitype superseded all the Old Testament types
which had pointed toward Him). Hence the apostles apply exactly the same affirmation of royal
priesthood to New Testament Christians as to Old Testament Israel (1 Peter 2:9 is an adaptation
of Ex. 19:5–6). It was only the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the law—as a system
of merit-earning and self-justification—which is rejected in Romans 3 and Galatians 3 (and
related passages).
As for the Decalogue (Ex. 20:1–17), the whole basis of its sanctions is stated to be God’s act of
redemption by grace (“I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of … bondage”). The most
solemn warnings against disobedience (the product of unbelief and rejection of God) are coupled
with the most lavish promises of grace (“and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them
that love me and keep my commandments,” ASV). While the distinctive element of love (for no
heathen ever professed to love his god with his whole heart) is made more explicit in
Deuteronomy than in the other books of the Torah, it is nevertheless an underlying
presupposition in them all: the love of God for the believer and the believer’s love for God. Yet
the emphasis is constantly laid upon a holy life as the necessary and inevitable product of a true
and living faith, even though a holy life has per se no saving virtue.
In regard to the wording of the first commandment (“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”),
it has often been alleged by the Wellhausen school that this dictum insists only on an exclusive
worship of Jehovah (monolatry) rather than an outright affirmation of monotheism. There is,
according to this interpretation, no denial of the existence of other gods; it is simply that Israel is
to be exclusively loyal to its own national god. But this construction of the words is quite
unwarranted; there would hardly be any other way of expressing the thought that Israel is to
worship the one true God alone, and not to serve any other deities of their own devising (though,
of course, such deities could exist only in their imagination). It is a sufficient refutation of this
monolatrous interpretation to point to the analogy of Ps. 96:4–5: “For great is Jehovah, and
greatly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods”—surely an affirmation of monolatry
according to Wellhausian interpretation; but the author goes on to affirm pure monotheism: “For
all the gods of the peoples are idols, (elɩ̂ lɩ̂ m—“things of nought”); but Jehovah made the
heavens” (ASV). This passage alone (and others could be cited) demonstrates conclusively that
the mention of “gods” in the plural implied no admission of the actual existence of heathen gods
in the first commandment.
There are certain variations between the form of the Ten Commandments in Ex. 20 and that
given in Deut. 5. In Deut. 5:15 an additional motivation is given for hallowing the Sabbath
(kindness to one’s bondslaves, even as the Lord had compassion on captive Israel), and the wife
is mentioned before the house rather than after it, in the tenth commandment. Since Deut. 5
occurs in the midst of a hortatory discourse addressed by Moses to the people, whereas Ex. 20
purports to be a record of the direct address of God to Israel, it is fair to conclude that the latter
represents the accurate and original wording. In Deut. 5 the preacher inserts an explanatory
interpolation (likewise under divine inspiration) which enforces the sanction of the fourth
commandment more urgently upon the conscience of the people. Note that the variation of order
between “wife” and “house” destroys the basis for the artificial distinction drawn by the Roman
church between not coveting the neighbor’s property (ninth commandment) and the neighbor’s
wife (tenth commandment). The fact that the order is immaterial—whether “house-wife” or
“wife-house”—shows that all of Ex. 20:17 was intended as a single commandment. (The
consequence, of course, is that the Romanist attempt to combine the first commandment with the
second must fail, since that would result in only nine commandments.)
 The Spiritual Significance of the Tabernacle

A considerable portion of Exodus (chaps. 25–28, 30, 35–40) is devoted to the design of the
tabernacle and of the various articles of furniture which it was to contain. Each of these articles
possessed a typical meaning which had a bearing upon the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Proceeding from the outermost parts to the inner sanctum, we find the following
significant features: (1) The outer hangings of the court (ḥāṣēr) enclosed a perimeter measuring
fifty by one hundred cubits. This court was designed to separate Israel as a holy possession of
God and keep it distinct from the Gentiles. This same principle was rigorously observed in the
later temples, both that of Solomon and that of Herod (in which was found a Greek inscription
threatening the death penalty to any Gentile who should venture beyond the barrier into the inner
court). (2) The tabernacle itself was a large tent (˒ōhel) measuring ten by thirty cubits (the cubit
being a little over a foot and a half) and curtained off into two sections, the holy place and the
holy of holies. (3) In the court outside of the tabernacle and situated in front of its curtain door
(māsāḵ) or “outer veil” were placed the “great” altar or altar of burnt offering (mizbaḥ ōlâh)
covered with bronze, on which all the offerings were presented, both the blood sacrifices
(zebāḥɩ̂ m) and the grain offering (minḥâ), which is rendered “meat-offering” in the KJV but
consisted of everything except meat (in the modern sense of flesh). (4) Between the brazen altar
and the entrance curtain stood the laver (kiyyôr), a large wash basin made of bronze, in which
priests had to wash their hands and their feet before entering the holy place. This probably
typified the cleansing power of Christ’s blood as represented and sealed to believers by baptism.
The tabernacle consisted of two compartments. (5) The holy place (qōdesh), measuring twenty
by ten cubits, contained three sacred objects. (6) On the north or right side, was the table of
“shewbread” (shûlḥām weleḥem pānɩ̂ m—table and bread of the Presence) on which were laid out
twelve fresh loaves of fine flour every Sabbath. It undoubtedly typified Christ as the bread of
life, and symbolized Israel also (the twelve tribes) as the people of God presented before him as a
living sacrifice. (7) On the south or left side, stood the lampstand or “candlestick” (menôrah)
with its seven oil lamps, typifying Christ as the light of the world, who by His Holy Spirit
performs the perfect work of God (symbolized by the number seven), enabling His people to
shine forth a light of testimony to the world (cf. Zech. 4). (8) On the west was located the small
golden altar, the altar of incense (mizbaḥ miqṭār), used only for the offering of incense in front of
the inner curtain (pārōḵet) which separated the holy place from the Holy of Holies. This golden
altar probably typified the effectual prayer of Christ the Intercessor, and symbolized also the
prayers of the saints (cf. Rev. 8:3). (9) The inner curtain (pārōḵet) typified the veil of Christ’s
flesh (cf. Heb. 10:20) which had to be rent (as it was at the hour Christ died, Matt. 27:51) if the
barrier was to be removed which separated God from His people.
(10) Within the holy of holies (qōdesh qoḏāšɩ̂ m), measuring ten by ten cubits, there was only
(11) the ark of the covenant (˓arōn habberɩ̄t), consisting of a chest 2.5 by 1.5 cubits, covered by a
lid of solid gold wrought into the shape of two cherubim facing each other with outstretched
wings and looking downward at the surface of the lid. (12) This lid was called the
“propitiatory”(kappōret, from kippēr, to propitiate or to atone), rendered by the KJV as “mercy
seat,” and upon it the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sin offering on the Day of
Atonement, thus typifying Christ’s atonement (Heb. 9:12) in the very presence of God. The ark
thus represented the presence of God in the midst of His people; it was His footstool as He sat
“enthralled between the cherubim” (Ex. 25:22; Ps. 80:1). Placed in front of the ark were the
golden pot of manna and the rod of Aaron which had blossomed (Ex. 16:33; Num. 17:10).
Apparently they were at a later time placed inside it (Heb. 9:4). But certainly the ark contained
the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, symbolizing the gracious covenant and the law.
These were the only objects left within the ark by the time of Samuel (1 Sam. 6:19), or at least by
the time of Solomon (1 Kings 8:9).

17
Leviticus and Numbers

Leviticus

THE HEBREW BIBLE gives to the book of Leviticus the name Wayyiqrā˒ (“And He called”), the
first word of 1:1. The LXX title Leuitikon means that which pertains to the Levites, and serves to
indicate the central theme of the book. The chief emphasis of this compendium of priestly
regulations is laid upon the holiness of Israel as a nation set apart for the service and glory of
God. It deals articularly with the proper presentation of sacrifices and the maintenance of a clear
distinction between that which is clean and that which is unclean.

Outline of Leviticus

I. Law of sacrifices, 1:1–7:38

A. Burnt offering, 1:1–17
B. Meal offering, 2:1–16
C. Peace offerings, 3:1–17
D. Sin offering for “inadvertent” sins, 4:1–5:13
E. Trespass offering, 5:14–6:7
F. Continual burnt offering and the offerings of priests, 6:8–23
G. Disposition of the victim in a sin offering, a trespass offering, and peace offerings, 6:24–
7:27
H. Wave offering and the heave offering, 7:28–38
II. Consecration of the priests, 8:1–10:20
A. Consecration of Aaron and his sons, 8:1–36
B. Aaron as high priest, 9:1–24
C. Judgment upon Nadab and Abihu for disobedience, 10:1–20
III. Separation from defilement, 11:1–15:33
 A. Clean and unclean foods, 11:1–47
B. Purification of mothers after childbirth, 12:1–8
C. Regulations governing leprosy, 13:1–14:57
D. Purification from bodily secretions, 15:1–33
IV. Day of atonement, 16:1–34
V. Place of sacrifice and the sanctity of blood, 17:1–16
VI. Practical Holiness: laws against unchastity, uncleanness, and idolatry, 18:1–20:27
VII. Priestly holiness and priestly duties, 21:1–22:33
VIII. Holy convocations: Sabbath, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, Trumpets,
Atonement, Tabernacles, 23:1–44
IX. Symbols of consecration, penalties for desecration, 24:1–23
X. Sabbatical year and year of Jubilee, 25:1–55
XI. Blessings of obedience, curses upon disobedience, 26:1–46
XII. Payment of vows and tithes, 27:1–34

Underlying Principles in the Levitical Legislation

No other book in the Bible affirms divine inspiration so frequently as Leviticus. Under the
heading of the verb to speak (dibbēr) alone, the concordance lists no less than thirty-eight
occurrences of the statement that Jehovah spoke to Moses or to Aaron. Nothing could be clearer
than that this entire sacrificial system was no invention of the Hebrew people (either in Moses’
day or in the course of later centuries) but a direct revelation of God. Otherwise no affirmation of
divine origin is to be trusted for any statement in the rest of Scripture. While there may be some
general resemblances or analogies which can be pointed out between these Levitical regulations
and the cultus practiced by other ancient Semites, there is a complete absence of the degrading
and superstitious elements characterizing the worship of the idolatrous nations during the Old
Testament age.
A remarkable authentication of the divine origin of this Mosaic code is to be found in the
semiprophetic twenty-sixth chapter. Here there is a preview of the subsequent history of Israel,
with its progressive decline from faith to apostasy, and a clear intimation of the Babylonian Exile
(vv. 32–39) and the subsequent restoration (vv. 40–45). It is not to be wondered at if
antisupernaturalist critics felt under compulsion to date the origin of Leviticus as exilic
(document H) and post-exilic (document P). No other course is open to one who on philosophical
grounds denies the possibility of supematural divine prediction.
There are at least five basic principles which operate throughout this book.

PRINCIPLES OF LEVITICAL LEGISLATION

 Principle Scripture

Maintain Holiness Lev. 19:2; 20:7; 20:26; 21:6

Maintain access to God by Lev. 4, 16

substitutionary atonement

Must worship according to God’s Lev. 26, 27

ordination

Must remain sexually pure Lev. 18

Abstain from commingling the holy Lev. 13, 14

and the profane

Religious year to be dominated by Lev. 23, 24

the number seven (Saboth, etc.)

1. As a unique people of God, redeemed Israel is (a) to keep holy, that is, to set themselves apart
from the unconverted world unto the service and worship of the one true God; (b) to maintain
access to God on the basis of the substitutionary atonement, by means of the shedding of the
blood of the sacrifice, as an innocent life is substituted for the forfeited life of the guilty.
2. Since this access to God is made possible by grace alone, the believer must come before God
only in the specific way which God has appointed. Hence all regulations as to ritual and sacrifice
must originate with God rather than with man. (Anything invented by man might be thought to
establish some kind of self-justifying personal merit.)
3. As a holy people spiritually wedded to Yahweh, Israel must rigorously abstain from all sexual
unchastity, all violation of the marriage bond, and from contact with corruption and decay (in
connection with corpses or defiling disease). These provisions are to be understood as giving
expression to a fundamental attitude of a holy love toward God and man. The second great
commandment as defined by the Lord Jesus (Matt. 22:39) was derived from Lev. 19:18: “Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The basic principle underlying monogamy is contained in
Lev. 18:18 for the term sister in that verse may also imply “another woman.”
4. Nothing corrupt or liable to speedy decay may be presented as an offering to God. This
excludes leaven, milk (which quickly sours), honey (which ferments), swine (associated by the
heathen with the worship of the gods of the netherworld), and clothing made of a mixture of
differing materials (such as wool and flax), which typified a commingling of the holy and the
profane.
 THE SEVEN FEASTS

FEAST DATE SYMBOLIC OF SCRIPTURE

Passover Abib 14 The death of Christ Lev. 23:5

(pesaḥ) Our Sacrificial Lamb Deut. 16:1–8

Unleavened Bread Abib 15–22 Life separated from sin Lev. 23:6–8
(Maṣṣôt) Deut. 16:8

Wave-sheaf Abib 16 Resurrection of Christ Lev. 23:11

(˓ōmer) Pentacost

First Fruits Ziv 5 Coming of the Holy Ex. 34:22

(Feast of Weeks) Spirit Lev. 23:15–16
(håag sheḇû˓ôṯ) upon the Church Deut. 16:9–12

Trumpets Tishri 1 Rapture or Second Num. 28:11–15

(yôm terû˓â) Coming of Christ Num. 29:1–6

Day of Atonement Tishri 10 Pardon of God’s people Lev. 16:1–34

(yôm kippûr) cf. Zechariah 12:10–14 Ex. 30:10–30
Num. 29:7–11

Tabernacles Tishri 15–22 Fellowship of God’s Lev. 23:34–42

(sūkkōt) people Num. 29:12
dwelling together in Deut. 16:13–17
peace.
Prophetic of the entire
Millennial
Kingdom the
celebration of the
completion of the
Harvest

(Wavesheaf, First fruits, and Tabernacles) in thanksgiving to God, their Provider

5. The religious year is dominated by the sacred number seven (symbolizing the perfect work of
God). Hence (a) every seventh day is a holy sabbath; (b) every seventh year is a Sabbath year of
rest for the crop-bearing land; (c) after seven sevens of years the fiftieth year is to be hallowed as
a jubilee, in which all mortgaged lands are to be returned to the original family; (d) Passover is
held at the end of the second heptad of Abib, on the evening of the fourteenth; (e) the Feast of
Unleavened Bread is celebrated for the next seven days; (f) the Feast of Pentecost is celebrated
after seven sevens of days following the offering of the wave-sheaf (hence on the “fiftieth” day);
(g) the seventh month, Tishri, is especially sanctified by three holy observances: the Feast of
Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles; (h) the Feast of Tabernacles is
celebrated seven days (fifteenth to twenty-second of Tishri), plus an eighth day for the final
convocation.
With the discovery of other ancient law codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, the fragments of
the Sumerian laws of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (about 1875 B.C., according to Kramer in ANET, p.
159), those of Bilalama, king of Eshnunna (about 1940 B.C., according to ANET, pp. 161, 217),
it becomes increasingly apparent that some of the so-called P laws were strikingly similar to
provisions enacted in the early second millennium, well before the age of Moses. Driver tried to
salvage a post-exilic date for P by assigning these resemblances exclusively to H (for most of
them are found in Lev. 17–26), and suggesting that Ezekiel included some very ancient materials
in compiling his “holiness code.” This, of course, tends to undermine the whole basis for dating
H in the time of Ezekiel.
With the recent publication of legal documents from the north Canaanite city of Ugarit, still
further resemblances have been coming to light, even in the matter of technical terminology. J. J.
Rabinowitz has noted in Ugaritic conveyances of land (written in Akkadian) the formula ṣamid
adi dariti (“joined in perpetuity”), and he remarks that it strikingly parallels the technical
Hebrew expression in Lev. 25:23, 30, liṣemɩ̂ tût (“in perpetuity”). The words in question are
cognate in the two languages, or else the Hebrew has borrowed an ancient Akkadian term.
Rabinowitz remarks: “I do not profess to know what precisely is the significance of the above
parallelism. It does seem to me, however, that it speaks volumes against those who would assign
a late date to the sections of Leviticus relating to the year of jubilee (e.g., Pfeiffer, IOT, p. 240).”
(The discovery of characteristic P terms for sacrifice in the fifteenth-century Ugaritic tablets has
already been discussed in chap. 13, pp. 175–176.)

The Three Main Festivals of the Hebrew Year (Lev. 23)

A. The Passover (pesaḥ) and Unleavened bread (maṣṣōt) (vv. 4–5)

1. Passover: on evening of fourteenth of Abib (the first month)
a) Purpose: to commemorate Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
b) Ritual: lamb slain, its blood to be sprinkled with hyssop on the lintel of the front
door, and then roasted and consumed by the offerer with his family (Deut. 16:5–6
specified that after God chose a holy city, as capital the public Passover should be
celebrated there).
c) Typical significance: Christ’s crucifixion (1 Cor. 5:7)
2. Feast of Unleavened Bread: fifteenth to twenty-second of Abib (v. 6)
 a) Purpose: to commemorate the hardships of the hurried flight from Egypt, Absence of
leaven symbolized sincere consecration to God
b) Ritual: offering of the first fruits of wave-sheaf on the second day (i.e., the sixteenth of
Abib); this consisted of barley, the earliest crop in the year (typifying the resurrection
of Christ); also a prescribed burnt offering presented with the sheaf, a holy
convocation (v. 7) on the fifteenth and twenty-second, both of which count as
Sabbaths and require additional burnt offerings (two bullocks, one ram, seven lambs)
and a sin offering (one goat); unleavened bread only to be eaten during this entire
week.

THE SIX TYPES OF BLOOD SACRIFICE

Name Purpose Victim God’s Priest’s Offerer’s

Portion Portion Portion

BURNT TO PROPITIATE MALE, ENTIVE NOTHING NOTHING

OFFERING FOR SIN IN UNBLEMISHED: ANIMAL (HENCE
(˓ōlah) GENERAL, OX/ SHEEP/ CALLED kālɩ̂ l,
ORIGINAL SIN; A GOAT/ DOVE WHOLE BURNT
MEANS OF (ACCORDING TO OFFERING)
APPROACH BY WEALTH)
UNHOLY
PEOPLE TO
HOLY
GOD

SIN OFFERING TO ATONE FOR PRIEST OR FATTY ALL THE NOTHING

(håaṭṭaˊt) SPECIFIC CONGREGATIO PORTIONS REMAINDER
TRANSGRESSIO N: (FAT (HAD TO BE
NS WHERE NO BULLOCK COVERING EATEN WITHIN
RESTITUTION INWARDS; THE COURT OF
RULER: HE-
WAS POSSIBLE KIDNEYS, TABERNACLE)
GOAT
LIVER, CAUL)
COMMONER:
SHE-GOAT

TRESSPASS TO ATONE FOR RAM (ONLY) SAME AS SAME AS NOTHING

OFFERING SPECIFIC ABOVE ABOVE
(ˊāshām) TRANSGRESSIO
 NS WHERE
RESTITUTION
WAS POSSIBLE,
DAMAGES
COMPUTED AT
SIX-FIFTHS
PAYABLE
IN ADVANCE.
LEGAL
SATISFACTION

PEACE FELLOWSHIP UNBLEMISHED FATTY 1. WAVE REMAINDER

OFFERING WITH GOD; MALE OR PORTIONS OFFERING; (EATEN IN
(shelāmɩ̂ m) A COMMUNION FEMALE BREAST—TO COURT, THE
MEAL. OX/SHEEP/GOA HIGH PRIEST SAME DAY)
FOR T
2. HEAVE
UNEXPECTED
OFFERING;
BLESSING OR
RIGHT
DELIVERANCE
FORELEG—TO
ALREADY
OFFICIATING
GRANTED
PRIEST
(TO BE EATEN
IN ANY
CLEAN
PLACE)

1. THANK
OFFERING
(tōʷdah)

2. VOTIVE FOR BLESSINGUNBELEMISHE SAME AS REMAINDER

OFFERING OR D ABOVE (EATEN IN
(Neder) DELIVERANCE MALE OR COURT, THE
ALREADY FEMALE SAME DAY)
GRANTED, OX/SHEEP/GOA
WHEN A VOW T
HAS BEEN
MADE IN
SUPPORT OF
 THE PETITION

3. FREEWILL TO EXPRESS MALE OR SAME AS SAME AS REMAINDER

OFFERING GENERAL FEMALE ABOVE ABOVE (EATEN IN
(nedābāh) THANKFULNES OX/SHEEP/GOA COURT,
S AND LOVE T (MINOR FIRST OR
TOWARD GOD, IMPERFECTION SECOND
WITHOUT S PERMITTED) DAY)
REGARD TO
SPACIFIC
BLESSINGS

B. Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks (sheḇû˓ôt): sixth of Sivan (third month), or forty-nine
days after the offering of the firstfruits on the second day of Unleavened Bread
1. Purpose: to dedicate to God the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
2. Ritual: a holy convocation (counting as a Sabbath); wave offering of two loaves of
leavened wheat flour; burnt offering (seven lambs, one bullock, two rams); sin
offering (he-goat); and peace offering (two male lambs); an additional burnt offering
and sin offering at the convocation itself (Num. 28:27).
3. Typical significance: the descent of the Spirit on the New Testament church (Acts 2).
C. Feast of Tabernacles or Booths (sukkôṯ): fifteenth to twenty-second of Tishri (seventh
month)
1. Purpose: to commemorate the wilderness wandering and to rejoice in the completion of all
the harvests (grain, fruit tree, vintage).
2. Ritual: convocations on fifteenth and twenty-second (both counting as Sabbaths); burnt
offering (from thirteen to seven bullocks, day by day; two rams, fourteen lambs) and sin
offering (one goat) (Num. 29); celebrants to live in booths, celebrating the week with
fruits: the ethrog or citron in one hand, and the lulab or cluster of branches in the other
(consisting of palms and willows).
3. Typical significance: apparently to foreshadow peace and prosperity of the coming
millennial kingdom (cf. Zech. 14:16).

The basic principle underlying all the blood sacrifices (zebāḥɩ̂ m) was atonement (kippûr) by the
substitution of an innocent life for the guilty. In token of this substitution, the offerer laid his
hand upon the victim’s head, thus identifying himself with it as his representative. To signify his
acceptance of the just penalty of death, the offerer himself slew his victim and then turned it over
to the priest for the completion of the ceremony. The priest usually sprinkled or smeared a
portion of the blood upon the altar.
The chart on the previous page indicates the distinction between the various types of sacrifice
and presents in a schematic form the system set forth in the first seven chapters of Leviticus.
 Numbers

The Hebrew title for this book is Bemiḏbār (“in the wilderness of”), taken from the first verse:
“And Jehovah spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai” (ASV). The LXX labels it Arithmoi,
or Numbers, because of the prominence of census figures in this book. And yet the Hebrew title
is quite appropriate to its general theme: Israel under God’s training in the wilderness. Historical
narrative occupies a larger proportion of this book than is the case in Leviticus or Deuteronomy,
and the period of years involved is far greater (forty years of discipline) than in the other books
of the Pentateuch (excluding Genesis).

Outline of Numbers

I. Preparation for the journey from Sinai, 1:1–10:10

A. Numbering the army and assigning positions for the march, 1:1–2:34
B. Levites numbered and duties described, 3:1–4:49
C. Excluding defilement from the camp: laws of leprosy; restitution for damages; trial of
accused adulteress, 5:1–31
D. Nazarites (type of wholly dedicated life); the Aaronic benediction, 6:1–27
E. Treasures dedicated to the tabernacle by the Twelve Tribes, 7:1–89
F. The Levites sanctified and installed in office, 8:1–26
G. The first annual Passover observed, 9:1–14
H. Following the pillar of cloud; the trumpet signals, 9:15–10:10
II. From Sinai to Kadesh-barnea, 10:11–14:45
A. First stage of the journey: the march begins, 10:11–36
B. First and second murmurings at Taberah and Kibroth-hattaavah (after feasting on quails);
seventy elders prophesy, 11:1–35
C. Judgment upon Aaron and Miriam for rebelling against Moses; Miriam’s leprosy cured,
12:1–16
D. The great rebellion at Kadesh-barnea after the adverse report of the ten spies, 13:1–14:45
III. From Kadesh-barnea to the plains of Moab, 15:1–21:35
A. Laws concerning meal offerings and sin offerings; death for blasphemy and Sabbath-
breaking; the garment fringes, 15:1–41
B. Rebellion of Korah and validation of Aaronic priesthood, 16:1–17:13
C. Relationship of Levites to priests; offerings and tithes their only portion in Canaan, 18:1–
32
D. The water of purification for uncleanness, 19:1–22
E. Death of Miriam; second smiting of the rock; Edom bars passage; death of Aaron, 20:1–29
F. Seventh murmuring and the brazen serpent; arrival at Moab, 21:1–20
G. First permanent conquests: defeat of Sihon and Og, 21:21–35
IV. Encounter with the Moabites and Balaam, 22:1–25:18
A. Balak hires Balaam, 22:1–41
B. Balaam’s triple blessing and prediction of Israel’s triumph, 23:1–24:25
C. The sin of Baal-peor, 25:1–18
V. Preparations for entering Canaan, 26:1–36:13
A. Arrangements for conquest and tribal apportionment of the land, 26:1–27:23
B. Laws concerning sacrifices and vows, 28:1–30:16
C. Vengeance on the Midianites, 31:1–54
D. Apportionment of Transjordan to Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, 32:1–42
E. Summary of journeys from Egypt to Moab, 33:1–56
F. Plans for division of Canaan, 34:1–36:13

R. K. Harrison comments concerning the Hebrew text, “The text of Numbers has not been as
well preserved as that of Leviticus, although there is comparatively little in the way of actual
corruption. In Numbers 21:14 something appears to have dropped out of the Hebrew, while in
Numbers 21:18 Mattanah is probably not a place name, as in the RSV, but rather a noun derived
form the root nathan, and meaning ‘gift.’ Some difficulties of translation also exist in connection
with Numbers 21:30 and 23:10” (R. K. Harrison, Old Testament Introduction, p. 634).

Underlying Principles in Numbers

The spiritual lesson enforced throughout the book is that God’s people can move forward only so
far as they trust His promises and lean upon His strength. The tragedy of Kadesh-barnea was the
unavoidable consequence of unbelief; only true believers can enter into God’s rest. Without faith
they can only die uselessly in the wilderness (cf. Heb. 3:7–19). The purpose of the census prior
to the failure at Kadesh (Num. 1–4) and of the census of the later generation at the plains of
Moab (Num. 26) was to show that they were not kept out of Canaan by their insufficient
numbers. It was not the size of their army that mattered, but only the size of their faith. Although
no more numerous than their fathers, the younger generation was able to conquer the Canaanites
because they were willing to trust God all the way and to obey His marching orders (in a way
that their fathers failed to do at Kadesh-barnea).

Credibility of the Census Figures in Numbers

Rationalist critics have always rejected the statistics of Numbers as implausibly high, and have
usually dismissed them as the fabrication of the Priestly School. This, of course, is based upon
the dubious proposition that the unusual is tantamount to the impossible. There has been a
tendency among some of the more recent scholars to explain the statistics of the Hebrew text by
reinterpreting the word for “thousand” (˒eleph) as simply equivalent to family or clan. It is true
that there is an ˒eleph which means family or clan (Judg. 6:15; 1 Sam. 10:19, etc.); but it is very
clear from the numeration chapters (Num. 1–4; 26) that ˒eleph is intended in the sense of
“thousand,” for the smaller unit below this ˒eleph is mē˒āt, “hundreds” (so Num. 1:21, 23, 25,
etc.). The most that a “family” could contribute to the national army would be four or five men
on the average, and it would be absurd to suppose that “hundreds” would be mentioned as the
next lower numerical unit after an average contingent of five men each.
Actually, the advocates of this view that ˒eleph equals “family contingent” assume that these
passages in Numbers were taken from ancient fragmentary records of an old census (possibly
from David’s time or even earlier), misunderstood and reworked by later traditionists, or by the
priestly editors themselves. These latter contributors, then, would be responsible for the lower
figures (hundreds, tens, and digits) tacked on after the original numerations of “families.” But
even this unlikely hypothesis lacks plausibility in the light of the surrounding circumstances.
Assuming that the total of 603,550 given in Num. 1:46 represents an original 603 families
averaging five men each, how can it be supposed that a male population of 3,015 could have put
the king of Egypt in fear because of their overwhelming numbers? Yet Pharaoh is made to say in
Ex. 1:9, “Behold, the people of Israel are more and mightier than we.” But usually the advocates
of this view (Mendenhall included) understand ˒eleph in the sense of “family complex” or
“clan,” or as Martin Noth suggests, “troop” or “military unit,” and increase the contribution to
fifty rather than a mere five. And yet even this treatment would result in a total fighting force of
only 30,150, scarcely a formidable contingent in the midst of the highly populated Delta of
Egypt. Furthermore, even a J passage like Ex. 12:37 gives the same total in round numbers as
Num. 1:46 (i.e., 600,000), and the same is true of Num. 11:21, a J-E section. Further
corroboration is given by the total amount of ransom money—at the rate of a half shekel
apiece—recorded in Ex. 38:25 as 100 talents, 1775 shekels. Since there were 3000 shekels to the
talent, this comes out to exactly 603,550 contributors. It is therefore safe to say that no objective
handling of the textual evidence can possibly sustain the thesis that ˒eleph in Numbers signifies
anything less than a literal thousand.
An objection has also been raised about Ex. 1:15 which mentions only two midwives, Shiphrah
and Puah, as serving the needs of the entire Hebrew community in Goshen back in the days
before Moses’ birth. Even if the population had not reached the two million mark by their time,
surely more than two midwives would be required for a population of well over a million and a
half. While this contention is certainly valid, so far as it goes, how could anyone suppose that an
Elohist living around 750 B.C. imagined that two midwives would have sufficed for all the
multitude in Goshen? Obviously the role of the two women named in Ex. 1:15 was that of
superintendents or overseers over the whole obstetrical guild. Egyptian documents from that
period indicate clearly that nearly every craft, skill, or profession was managed by an overseer
(imy-r) who was responsible to the government. There is every reason to suppose that the
bureaucratic regime of the Eighteenth Dynasty would have invested one or two midwives with
responsibility for all the rest.
But if it be conceded that the census lists in Numbers furnish no evidence for a smaller figure
than 600,000 men of military age, can such a huge number of migrants (possibly totalling
2,500,000 when the women and children were included) be thought to have survived for forty
years in the Sinai desert? Even granting that the Sinai Peninsula was less arid than in modern
times (for it then supported large and powerful tribes like the Amalekites of Ex. 17:8), it would
be obviously impossible for such an enormous host with all their flocks and herds to be sustained
in this uncultivated wilderness. In answer to this rationalistic objection it should be noted that the
entire narrative of the Israelite migration frankly concedes that this was a physical impossibility,
from the natural standpoint. It emphasizes in every conceivable way—and so does the later
Hebrew literature which recalls the history of Moses (Ps. 78:24; Neh. 9:20, etc.)—that the
sustaining of this great multitude was a miraculous, supernatural work of God. The supply of
food came from manna (Ex. 16:35), and the water came from the cleft rock (Ex. 17:6), and that
too in such abundance as to supply the entire host. This is recorded as a sheer miracle, in terms
as forthright and plain as any miracle in Scripture. To reject it on rationalistic grounds is to
impose upon the Bible a philosophical prejudice against miracles, as such, which can never come
to terms with the Scripture as the Word of God.
It has been argued by some that it would have taken the entire day for a multitude of two and a
half million to get into formation for a line of march, and thus would have been unable to
progress a single mile before night closed in upon them. Hence they could not have performed
the journeys attributed to them in Numbers 33 and elsewhere. But actually the length of time
required to fall into marching formation depends entirely upon the width and disposition of the
columns themselves. It is not necessary to assume that they kept within the limits of a highway,
for example, since they were moving over largely uninhabited range land. The four main
divisions of approximately 500,000 each (cf. Num. 10:14–20) might just as well have formed
their ranks simultaneously and completed preparations to march within four hours (from 6:00 to
10:00 A.M., for example) and then have completed a good ten miles in four hours before setting
up camp again (which in turn might have occupied four hours between 2:00 and 6:00 P.M.).
It has also been objected to the credibility of the record in Numbers that the number of firstborn
given in Num. 3:43 is much too low for a male population of over 600,000. There must have
been far more than 22,273 firstborn sons in so great a company, unless indeed the families had
numbered forty or more males apiece. But this argument, as Delitzsch points out (Pentateuch,
3:9–13), is founded upon the false assumption that the law (Num. 3:46–47) which required the
sanctification of firstborn males was intended to operate retroactively. Nothing in the context
suggests that any more are involved than those who were born between the event of the Exodus
itself and this episode (thirteen months later) when the census was being taken. On the basis of
603,550 males, the probable number of males between twenty and thirty years of age would be
about 190,000, more or less. This would yield an average number of new marriages per year of
about 19,000. From this number of marriages, many of which would allow for two gestation
periods in eighteen months, a figure in excess of 22,000 male births would hardly be excessive.
Others have objected that the supply of quails furnished to the Israelite host according to Num.
11:31 is absolutely incredible. A quantity of quail piled up over such an area for a depth of two
cubits would result in about 70,000 bushels of quail per Israelite per meal. This, however, is a
total misunderstanding of what the Hebrew text says. It does not state that the quail comprised a
heap of bodies two cubits deep; it only indicates that the quail were deflected downward by a
driving wind to a height of two cubits (about three feet) above the surface of the ground, where
they could be easily knocked down by the meat-hungry Israelites. (The preposition ˓al before the
phrase “the face of the earth” may just as well be translated “above” as “upon” in a context
where horizontal motion is involved.)
There are several other arguments of this character (cf., ISBE, 4:2168–69), but none of them
stand up under analysis any better than do those which have just been treated. Many other critical
attacks upon the book depend entirely upon the acceptance of Wellhausian presuppositions for
their cogency. Only by question-begging techniques of dissection, for example, is it possible to
make out any inconsistencies in the account of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram in
Num. 16. (Korah is assigned to P, and Dathan and Abiram to J-E.)
Finally, a word should be said about a much cited “proof text” appealed to by Documentarian
Critics to disprove Mosaic authorship. It is argued that Moses could never have written Num.
12:3 about himself (“Now Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of
the earth”). If Moses was truly that humble, how could he have written such a laudatory
judgment concerning himself? A good answer to this is found in the New Bible Commentary:
“Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses did not hesitate to record his own sins
and weaknesses in the clearest of language. It would be contrary to the remarkable objectivity of
the Bible if he did not also record his strongest point, his meekness.… [The contents of this
verse] are necessary to a true understanding of this chapter.” Delitzsch comments, “It is simply a
statement which was indispensable to a full and correct understanding of all the circumstances,
and which was made quite objectively, with reference to the character which Moses had not
given to himself but had acquired through the grace of God, and which he never falsified from
the very time of his calling until the time of his death.” He then goes on to quote the comment of
Calmet: “As he praises himself here without pride, so he will blame himself elsewhere with
humility” (Pentateuch, 3:77).

The Oracles of Balaam

Chapters 22–24 of Numbers record the vain attempt of King Balak of Moab to bring about the
defeat and downfall of the Israelite host as they occupied his territory under the leadership of
Moses. Realizing that he could not hope to overcome them by the military forces at his disposal,
even with the help of the Midianite troops who were allied with him, he decided to resort to
sorcery or magic. He knew of the reputation of a prophet named Balaam, who lived in Pethor
near the bank of the Euphrates (Num. 22:5) and who had an impressive record as a servant of
Yahweh, the God of Israel. By repeated appeals through his official agents Balak at length
induced the reluctant seer to come to his aid and pronounce a potent curse upon the Hebrew
forces that would insure their defeat. Balak promised Balaam great wealth and high honors if he
would comply. But Balaam soon found that he was in trouble with God over his decision to
cooperate with Moab, and after a confrontation with a threatening angel, perceived at first by his
donkey (who actually spoke up in human language in reply to Balaam’s angry reproach), he
continued his way toward the plains of Moab with a firm commitment to utter only what Yahweh
put into his mouth, whether or not it pleased the king who had hired him (22:35).
As it turned out, even though Balak took his guest to three different hills from where he could
look down upon the Israelite encampment, Balaam found himself powerless to speak anything
but words of promise and blessing in regard to the people of Moses—much to Balak’s disgust.
His reaction in 24:15–20 was to make even more explicit the coming conquest of Edom and
Amalek that Israel would achieve. And then, in verses 22–24 he also predicted the Assyrian
conquest of the Hebrews in later generations, and even the invasions of the Greeks and possibly
also the Romans, referred to as the people from “Kittim.”
As might be expected, the Documentarian scholars regard these passages as concocted no earlier
than the eighth century B.C., and connect them with J or E. Robert Pfeiffer even questions the
connection of Num. 23 with Balaam at all, until the time of the “Redactor” who injected them
into the tradition which later grew up around his name (Pfeiffer, IOT, p. 279). Supernatural
features like a talking donkey and a correct prediction of Israel’s future would hardly find
acceptance with any rationalist, and so this conjecture is only to be expected.
But it is interesting to observe that an extra-biblical witness about Balaam was discovered at Tell
Deir ’Alla, known in Hebrew history as the Valley of Succoth, located not far from the junction
of the Jabbok where it joins the Jordan River. In the ruins of an Iron Age II temple at that site
some inscribed plaster fragments made reference to Bl˓m br B˓r (“Balaam son of Beor”) who is
referred to as ḥōzēh ˒elōhɩ̂ m (“seer of the gods”). Baruch Levine comments: “This fact alone,
quite apart from the intriguing character of the text as a whole, enhances the realism of Biblical
poetry and historiography. An epic figure known only from the Hebrew Bible (and from post-
biblical interpretive literature) was, in fact, renowned in the Jordan Valley during the pre-exilic
biblical period.” (Cf. J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij in “Aramaic Texts from Deir ’Alla,”
Leiden, 1976.) This kind of evidence furnishes impressive proof that “unlikely” narratives from
the Mosaic period may have had a wider support than the Hebrew record among the pagan
contemporaries of the Hebrews themselves.

18
Deuteronomy
THE HEBREW NAME of Deuteronomy is ˒ēlleh haddebārɩ̂ m (“these are the words”) or more
briefly, Debārɩ̂ m (“words”)—taken from the opening line of 1:1. The LXX called it by the more
descriptive term Deuteronomion (“second law-giving”), because it consists mostly of a
restatement of laws contained in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. In the closing months of his
earthly career, Moses addressed the assembled congregation of Israel and impressed upon them
their peculiar privileges and obligations as the covenant people of Jehovah. Looking forward to
the conquest of Canaan, he set forth the divinely ordained constitution of the new theocracy to be
established in the land of promise. He laid the responsibility for the preservation of this
theocracy upon the conscience of each individual citizen and worshiper.

Outline of Deuteronomy

I. First discourse: historical prologue, 1:1–4:49

A. God’s gracious guidance from Horeb to Moab, 1:1–3:29
B. The new generation admonished to cherish the law, 4:1–40
C. Appointment of the Transjordanian cities of refuge, 4:41–43
D. Historical setting of this discourse, 4:44–49
II. Second discourse: laws by which Israel is to live, 5:1–26:19
A. Basic commandments, 5:1–11:32
1. The Decalogue and the love of God to be taught to posterity, 5:1–6:25
2. Steadfast obedience and constant grateful remembrance of God’s dealings, 7:1–11:32
B. Statutes of worship and a holy life, 12:1–16:22
1. Genuine worship and needful safeguards against idolatry, 12:1–13:18
 2. Rules about food, the Sabbaths, and the feast days, 14:1–16:22
C. Judgments: the treatment of specific offenses, 17:1–26:19
1. Death for idolatry, appellate procedure; the responsibilities of a king, 17:1–20
2. Penalties for witchcraft and false prophecy; the prophetic order and the Messiah-
Prophet, 18:1–22
3. Cities of refuge for accidental homicides; penalties for fraud and perjury, 19:1–21
4. Rules of battle and siege, 20:1–20
5. Care of the deceased; captive wives; inheritance and family discipline; removal of the
corpse from the gallows, 21:1–23
6. Concerning lost property; no masquerading as opposite sex; no mingling of seeds or
yoking of diverse animals, 22:1–12
7. Laws concerning marriage, chastity, care of the body, cleanliness, 22:13–24:5
8. Laws concerning economic and social justice, 24:6–25:19
9. Laws of stewardship, offerings, and tithes, 26:1–19
III. Third discourse: warning and prediction, 27:1–31:30
A. The law to be inscribed and its sanctions recited at Mount Ebal, 27:1–26
B. Conditions for blessing and chastisement of the nation (prediction of future judgments
upon Israel), 28:1–68
C. Review of God’s benefactions; exhortations to faithfulness, 29:1–30:20
D. Written law entrusted to the leaders of Israel, 31:1–30
IV. Song of Moses: Israel’s responsibility to the covenant, 32:1–43
V. Final charge and farewell, 32:44–33:29
A. Moses’ last exhortation, 32:44–47
B. Moses warned of approaching death, 32:48–52
C. Moses’ final blessing upon Israel, tribe by tribe, 33:1–29
VI. Death of Moses and his obituary, 34:1–12

Underlying Principles of Deuteronomy

As already indicated, Deuteronomy consists of a restatement and summary of the Law in a

compendious form for the guidance of the Israelite nation as a whole. But much of this summary
is couched in homiletical or sermonic terms. That is, Moses is not simply explaining what the
laws of God are, but he is earnestly enjoining them upon the consciences of his people, and
urging them to take with utmost seriousness God’s call to a holy life. Certain characteristic
emphases or leading thoughts dominate the various discourses. Among these are the following.
1. The spirituality of God (4:12, 15, 16) and His uniqueness and unity are set forth (4:35, 39; 6:4;
7:9; 10:17).
2. God’s relationship to His people under the covenant is one of personal love rather than of
merit-earning legalism (4:37; 7:13; 33:3).
 PRINCIPLES OF DEUTERONOMY

Spirituality of God 4:12, 15, 16

Uniqueness & Unity of God 4:35, 39; 6:4; 7:9; 10:17

Relationship of love between God and His 4:37; 7:13; 33:3

covenant people

Love for God the dynamic principle of the 6:5; 7:8; 10:12, 15; 11:1, 13, 22; 13:3; 19:9;
believer’s life 30:6, 16, 20

Idolotry to be totally shunned 6:14, 15; 7:4; 8:19, 20; 11:16, 17, 20; 13:2–
12; 30:17–18

Live as a holy people 7:6; 26:19; 28:9

Faithfulness rewarded; violation punished Chaps. 28–30

Retain and obey the revealed truth from God 9:7

“Remember and forget not”

3. For the believer the basic requirement is love for God, and this love is to be the
dynamic principle for his life (6:5; 7:8; 10:12, 15; 11:1, 13, 22; 13:3; 19:9; 30:6, 16, 20).
4. Israel’s greatest peril is idolatry, which is to be resisted and suppressed with
uncompromising severity (6:14, 15; 7:4; 8:19, 20; 11:16, 17, 20; 13:2–12; 30:17, 18).
5. Because of their close relation to the holy One, the Israelites must live as a holy
people (7:6; 26:19; 28:9). This holiness entails abstinence from unclean foods, safe-guarded by
restricting sacrificial worship to a chosen central sanctuary; it finds expression in love toward the
neighbor and charity to the poor and underprivileged (widows, orphans, Levites, and foreigners).
6. Faithfulness to the covenant is to be rewarded by material benefits; violation and disregard of
the covenant will be punished by material disaster, loss and ultimate exile (chaps. 28–30).
7. The characteristic admonition is: “Remember, and forget not!” Rather than embarking on
some quest for “new truth” to replace the old, Israel is to retain and to obey the revealed truth
which it has once and for all received from the absolute and unchanging Source of truth.
In general the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy has been well transmitted with few difficulties. But
in Deut. 32:43 it appears that the LXX worked from a longer Hebrew Vorlage than the MT, and
interestingly enough, Rom. 15:10 quotes from a clause which appears in the LXX insertion.
Another Old Testament quotation also appears in Heb. 1:6, yet in this case the source may have
been Ps. 97:7, which contains the same wording as the LXX in Deut. 32:43 (R. K. Harrison, Old
Testament Introduction, p. 662).

The Mosaic Authorship of Deuteronomy

Considerable discussion has already been devoted to the higher criticism of Deuteronomy in
chapter 7 (pp. 105–108). There it was pointed out that the 621 B.C. date assigned by the
Documentarians to the composition of this book was found unsatisfactory by many rationalistic
critics since the time of Wellhausen. These twentieth-century scholars have come to the
conclusion that De Wette’s theory of the origin of Deuteronomy in the reign of Josiah simply
does not square with the internal evidence furnished by the text itself. The legislation it contains
could never have arisen under the conditions which prevailed in the late seventh century B.C. The
social, economic, and historical situation reflected by this book is quite different from that of
Josiah’s time. While none of these scholars could on philosophic grounds entertain the
possibility of actual Mosaic authorship, their critique of Wellhausen’s doctrinaire position has
certainly left the date of Deuteronomic composition up in the air. Some have argued for a
postexilic period, and others for a much earlier date. (Welch suggested the reign of Solomon, and
Robertson the reign of David.) But they have at least agreed in condemning 621 B.C. as quite
impossible for the composition of this last book in the Pentateuch.
In the last two decades, however, considerable study has been directed toward the structure of
the suzerainty treaties drawn up between vassal kings and their imperial overlords in the days of
the Hittite ascendancy, in the latter half of the second millennium. As Meredith Kline points out,
the typical suzerainty treaty of the Hittite period consisted of the following parts: (1) preamble
(Deut. 1:1–5); (2) historical prologue (Deut. 1:6–4:49); (3) the stipulations or main provisions of
the treaty (Deut. 5–26); (4) curses and blessings, or covenant-ratification (Deut. 27–30); (5)
arrangements for succession, or continuation of the covenant (with invocation of witnesses and
disposition of the text, and the periodic reading of the treaty before the public—cf. Deut. 31–33).
As contrasted with the second millennium treaties, those of the first millennium tend to vary in
the order of the sections above specified, and they generally lacked section 2 (the historical
prologue), or the blessings for covenant-faithfulness in section 4. G. E. Mendenhall remarks that
it has been established that Deuteronomy conforms to the treaty structure of the second
millennium, and hence this “covenant type is even more important as a starting point, because it
cannot be proven to have survived the downfall of the great empires of the second millennium
B.C. The older form of the covenant was no longer widely known after the United Monarchy.”
On Conservative presuppositions, it is possible to establish a very strong case for the Mosaic
authorship of Deuteronomy. By the test of agreement with known historical conditions and by
careful literary analysis, it is not difficult to show that only the pre-Davidic period can
successfully be reconciled with the data of the Hebrew text. It can be shown by a fair handling of
the evidence: (a) that Deuteronomy must have been written prior to the rise of the writing
prophets in the eighth century B.C.; (b) that it also antedates the division of the Hebrew monarchy
into Judah and Israel in 931 B.C.; (c) that it best agrees with a period near the conquest under
Joshua. A very able reexamination of this evidence has been produced by the late G. T. Manley,
demonstrating with most compelling logic that the data of the text itself preclude a post-Mosaic
origin. A few of the most significant arguments he advances will be found briefly summarized in
the ensuing paragraphs of this chapter.
But before examining this positive evidence, it would be well to rebut some of the standard
“proofs” of post-Mosaic authorship based upon allegedly “telltale” phrases or turns of expression
found in the text itself. The first of these is “as at this day” (kayyôʷm hazzeh), which occurs for
example in 2:30. This phrase has been interpreted to mean that a great period of time has elapsed
since the days of Moses, doubtless many centuries. But on what basis must this lapse of time be
assumed? In virtually every instance where this phrase occurs, it fits in perfectly with the
situation which would have existed in the closing days of Moses as he addressed the assembled
host of Israel on the plains of Moab. Looking back over the vista of forty years (the period of the
wilderness wanderings), it would have been altogether appropriate for him to add that the
consequences of the episode or transaction mentioned still persisted until this closing year of his
life. No real difficulty is presented by any of the six occurrences of this phrase: 2:30, the
permanency of Sihon’s conquest; 4:20, the continuance of Israel as the covenant nation; 4:38, “as
at this day” refers to their imminent conquest of Canaan as their inheritance; 8:18 is prospective,
for the hope is that God’s favor in the future may continue as it is right now in Moses’ time;
10:15 refers to the permanency of God’s choice of Israel as His people; 29:28 has a prophetic
perspective as it predicts a future judgment upon the disobedient nation.
A second “telltale” phrase is “beyond the Jordan, ” when it refers to the region east of the Jordan
valley (as for example in 1:1). It is urged that if this work has really been composed in Moab,
“on the other side of the Jordan” (˓ēber hayyardēn) could only refer to Canaan proper. The fact
that it demonstrably does refer to the eastern region of Gilead, Reuben, and Gad is said to prove
that the author must have lived in Judah or Israel proper. But this is not the only possible
inference by any means. As a matter of fact, ˓ēber hayyardēn occasionally refers to the region
west of Jordan as well, in at least three other passages (3:20, 25; 11:30). This would indicate an
author residing in the east, such as Moses in the plains of Moab. How are these variant uses of
the phrase to be reconciled? By taking ˓ēber hayyardēn as a proper noun like Transjordania—a
name attached to the land back in patriarchal times or earlier by the Palestinian population and
adopted even by the inhabitants of the Transjordan region itself. Observe that during the British
mandate over this territory (subsequent to World War I) the area was known as “Transjordania”
even to those who lived in it, though “Transjordania” means “On the other side of Jordan.” In
New Testament times the lower part of this region, at least, was known as “Peraea” (The Other-
side Land) even to its own inhabitants. It is a reasonable supposition that the term ˓ēber
hayyardēn had become a standard designation for the territory to the east of Jericho regardless of
where the speaker happened to be. In those three instances, however, where the phrase refers to
Canaanland west of the Jordan, we are to understand this as used in its literal and obvious sense
rather than as a geographical name.
So far as this writer is aware, there are no expressions in the text of Deuteronomy which are not
perfectly reconcilable with Mosaic authorship. Only chapter 34 is demonstrably post-Mosaic,
since it contains a short account of Moses’ decease. But this does not endanger in the slightest
the Mosaic authenticity of the other thirty-three chapters, for the closing chapter furnishes only
that type of obituary which is often appended to the final work of great men of letters. An
author’s final work is often published posthumously (provided he has been writing up to the time
of his death). Since Joshua is recorded to have been a faithful and zealous custodian of the
Torah, Moses’ literary achievement, it is quite unthinkable that he would have published it
without appending such a notice of the decease of his great predecessors.

Evidence for the Priority of Deuteronomy to the Eighth-Century

Prophets

The most characteristic title for God in Deuteronomy is “Yahweh thy God.” If the book was
composed in the seventh century or thereafter, it might be expected to reflect the theological
terminology of the great prophets like Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, who formulated classic
Hebrew theology in the previous century. At the very least a Josianic work should have reflected
the divine titles most in vogue during the ministry of Jeremiah, Josiah’s contemporary. But the
actual statistics show quite the contrary: (1) Hosea employs “Yahweh their God” only four times,
as against fifteen occurrences of Elōhɩ̂ m (God) alone and thirty-five occurrences of Yahweh
alone. (2) Isaiah 1–35 employs “Yahweh their God” only three times, as over against very
frequent occurrences of “Yahweh of hosts” and “the holy One of Israel.” (3) Jeremiah
characteristically uses the title “LORD of Hosts” (or Yahweh of hosts—Heb.) and seldom
employs the Deuteronomic formula. The same is true with the post-exilic prophets Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi. If, therefore, Deuteronomy was composed in the time of Josiah just
before the Exile, or in the time of Ezra after the Exile (as Hoelscher and Kennett have argued), it
is very difficult to account for its employment of a divine title which was not in vogue in either
of those two periods. Especially is this true of the title “Yahweh the God of your fathers,” which
occurs frequently enough in Deuteronomy but never appears in either the pre-exilic or post-exilic
prophets; yet it is to be found in Ex. 3:6 (“I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”) and an adaptation of it also in Ex. 15:2 and 18:4.
It was contended by the Wellhausen school that Deuteronomy shows a knowledge of the history
and legislation contained in J and E, but not that of P. Manley proceeds to show by comparative
tables that this supposed ignorance of P is not borne out in actual fact. He asks the question, “If
the Deuteronomic code were an ‘expansion’ of that in J-E, why should more than three-quarters
of it have been omitted? Have burglary and theft ceased? Would not the laws protecting a slave
(Ex. 21:22ff., 26ff.) have made a special appeal to an author who elsewhere is so concerned to
protect the weak? Again, why should these old laws in Table B [this refers to a set of laws
relating to idolatry, false witness, rights of the firstborn, etc., bearing some resemblance to
provisions in the Hammurabic Code, but not discoverable in J-E at all], similar in type to the
others, have remained so long unrecorded?… We are forced to the conclusion that the legislation
of Deuteronomy is not an ‘expansion’ of the covenant code. Neither can it be attributed, as some
scholars have maintained, to the old Canaanite civil law. There are marked differences between
the Deuteronomic laws and those found in the Ras Shamra Tablets; … this suggests that [the
Deuteronomic code] was fixed before the settlement in Canaan, and there are signs of strong
reaction against Canaanite influence.” Again, in the case of leprosy, Deut. 24:8 tells the people
“to take heed … and do all that the priests the Levites shall teach you; as I commanded them.”
Plainly, these words assume that the priestly law was already in existence, yet it is found only in
P (Lev. 13–14). How can it be said that the author of Deuteronomy knew nothing about P?
Of course it could be argued that P has simply borrowed from D, but it should be remembered
that much of the ground for dating D before P was based on the contention that D contained
nothing distinctively priestly. If therefore it turns out that D does in fact contain substantial
material otherwise peculiar to P, the basis for dating D earlier than P falls to the ground. (This of
course has been recognized by those who insist that D also is post-exilic; but it leaves the point
difficult to establish what book of the law it was that Hilkiah found in the temple in 621 B.C., if
not even D was in existence at that time!)
In addition to the objections to Josianic dating raised by the critics mentioned in chapter 7 (p.
105), we should observe how incongruent Deut. 16:21–22 is with the conditions existing during
the reign of Josiah. Here we have a law which contemplates the making of more than one altar to
Yahweh (a natural possibility prior to the erection of the temple), and therefore, like Deut. 27:1–
8, creates a real difficulty for those who understand D to have been composed for the promotion
of Josiah’s program (i.e., that all valid worship must be carried on in the one center at
Jerusalem). Note also that the special objects of Josiah’s reform, the Kemārɩ̂ m (the idol priests),
the bāmôt (high places with their temples or shrines), and the bronze horses dedicated to the sun-
god—all these receive no mention whatsoever in Deuteronomy. The state of affairs
contemplated, then, in the book of Moses simply cannot be squared with the known historical
conditions of the seventh century B.C.

Evidence for the Priority of Deuteronomy to the Division of the

Monarchy

The text of Deuteronomy contains many references to the sinister nature of Canaanite influence
upon the purity of Israel’s religion. All the Canaanite shrines are to be completely demolished,
and no trace is to be left of altar, asherah, or pillar. All the cultic practices pertaining to their
pagan faith are to be sedulously avoided, such as boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, or shaving
the beard, or gashing the flesh in devotion to some heathen deity. These numerous provisions
against the survival of Canaanite customs or shrines suggest a danger which still threatens the
author’s generation. It certainly seems as if it is a future menace to be dealt with, rather than an
element of corruption that has already endured for centuries.
Of pivotal significance is the manner in which the Israelite tribes are referred to. If Deuteronomy
had been composed subsequent to the schism of 931 B.C., it is hardly conceivable that no
reference or allusion to this breach should have found its way into the text, yet as a matter of
fact, where these tribes are mentioned they are represented as separate entities but all included in
the single nation of Israel (cf. 1:13, 15; 5:23; 12:5, 14; 29:10; 31:28). The author of these
passages betrays no awareness whatsoever of the cleavage between Judah and Ephraim.

Evidence for the Composition of Deuteronomy Prior to the Conquest

In the earlier chapters of Deuteronomy particularly, there are numerous appeals to the hearers to
recall past episodes and conditions which are within the memory of those who are being
addressed. The memory of the Egyptian bondage is especially vivid. Six times the phrase occurs,
“the house of bondage”; five times we read, “Remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of
Egypt”; five times the formula appears, “through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm.”
This last phrase, by the way, occurs also in Ex. 6:1 (a J-E passage) and in Ex. 6:6 (a P passage),
and is analogous to an expression which often occurs in Old Egyptian texts describing scenes of
battle.
Any theory of the origin of Deuteronomy must take account of the fact that the land of Canaan to
the west of the Jordan is always viewed from the outside so far as the author’s standpoint is
concerned. Whether from the southern border or from the east and the Moabite highlands, the
viewpoint is always that of a newcomer contemplating invasion, never that of an inhabitant who
already dwells within its borders. Border cities such as Eshcol (1:24) and Gaza (2:23) are named,
rather than such central locations as Hebron; and when the limits of the land of promise are
indicated, they are described by such terms as “the mount of the Amorites” and “Lebanon” (1:7),
not by the later terminology “from Dan to Beersheba,” which would have been used after the
Danite migration.
So far as the legislation is concerned, we have already observed a certain substratum of
fundamental law which the Mosaic provisions contained in common with the Hammurabic Code,
yet the contrasts between the two are even more significant than the similarities. For example,
the Babylonian code makes a sharp class distinction between the free man (awēlum) and the
semifree (mushkēnum), as well as the slave (wardum). In Deuteronomy there is virtually no class
distinction, and social conditions correspond to those of a far more rural and agricultural
community than was the case in Babylon (or in Israel of David’s era). More significant still,
Mosaic legislation had a deeply religious tone. The statutes of judgment were said to be those of
Yahweh their God, and the Israelites were to observe them with all their heart and soul. Of the
346 verses which make up Deut. 12–26, more than half are moral and religious in character,
while 93 of them are taken up with specific commands related to the approaching settlement in
the land. It should be noted that the exhortations, warnings, and promises of blessing which are
so characteristic of Deuteronomy are completely lacking in the Babylonian code. Note also that
in the text of Hammurabi we find a strictly impersonal style such as would be usual for a
sophisticated legal system pertaining to a more urbanized society. In Deuteronomy, however, we
seem to be listening to an old and honored leader speaking to the people whom he has personally
guided through many years, and reminding them of the experiences they have shared together.
We know enough about the Babylonia of Hammurabi’s period to recognize that these were in
fact the conditions when those laws were promulgated after centuries of monarchic rule. In the
later years of the Hebrew monarchy, the conditions in Palestine must have approximated those in
Babylon, for by that time trade and industry were well developed and class distinctions were
strongly marked. Trades and crafts were regulated on a commercial basis, with money fines
specified to indemnify property owners who suffered injury or loss. In Deuteronomy, however,
we find no laws providing compensation for loss caused by careless builders or for injury to
health due to incompetent physicians. This legislation is suited rather to a simple, agricultural
people deeply interested in their cattle; food and raiment are the chief concerns.
Lastly we revert once more to the incompatibility of Josiah’s time with the type of legislation
found in Deuteronomy regarding the preservation of Israel’s faith. Deut. 13:1–18 and 17:2–5
decree the death penalty for apostasy or for inciting others to forsake the nation’s covenant with
Yahweh. It is hard to conceive of such laws being planned or revived during the time of
Manasseh (Josiah’s grandfather). There is no actual mention of them in connection with Josiah’s
reform. Even Driver is forced to the conclusion that “the time when they could have been
enforced had long passed away; they had consequently only an ideal value” (Deuteronomy, in
ICC, p. xxxii). But, as H. M. Wiener has pointed out, idealists may perhaps propose a lofty
standard on a general basis, but they scarcely go so far as to lay down a specific procedure for
handling the violations of the ideal. Yet in both these passages, a very definite procedure is
prescribed, and that in chapter 13 particularly presupposes primitive conditions. The lawgiver
here evidently relies upon the cooperation of the nation as a whole to carry out the sanction of
this law, even if it entails civil warfare. Deut. 12:2–4 enjoins the destruction of all the Canaanite
shrines “on every high hill and under every green tree,” with all of their “pillars” and “asherim.”
Apparently the author regarded this destruction as both practical and possible in his time. He
insisted that the land must be cleared of these idolatrous symbols before acceptable worship
could be offered to Yahweh. Such an attitude would be quite inconceivable in the seventh
century B.C., or indeed in earlier centuries subsequent to the time of Solomon, when idolatrous
cults had penetrated to every level of Israelite society. Even the record of the book of Judges,
pertaining to a time prior to the establishment of the monarchy, implies the existence of these
Deuteronomic provisions. Thus the action of Gideon (Judg. 6:25–32) in destroying the altar and
precinct of Baal suggests that he knew of some such injunction, and his father’s defense of this
deed implies that he supposed his son was doing the right thing.
Despite the efforts of Kennett and Hoelscher to find an appropriate historical setting in the post-
exilic period of Ezra and Nehemiah, it is far easier to harmonize the historical and social
conditions presupposed by Deuteronomy with what must have been the case in the time of the
original conquest rather than in the period of the restoration. In Ezra’s time, the Canaanites and
Amorites were an all but forgotten memory, and the new Jewish commonwealth was threatened
by such foreigners as the Ammonites, Philistines, and various other peoples who had little if any
ethnic relationship to the original inhabitants of Canaan. Moreover, the confident tone of the
author of Deuteronomy, who looks forward to irresistible conquest of the entire territory from
Dan to Beersheba, is incapable of reconciliation with the discouraging and limited circumstances
which confronted the tiny Persian province of Judea after the return from Babylon. In
Deuteronomy we discover an attitude of glowing optimism which finds expression in the series
of blessings appropriate to a people of the Lord about to settle in a new land in which no
opposition can stand before them. It is a land which has been well cultivated and productive of
fruits, and able to support its inhabitants on a most generous scale. This can scarcely be
reconciled with the stripped and devastated land bereft of inhabitants, bare of fortifications,
denuded of vineyards and fruit orchards, which confronted the returning immigrants from
Babylon. Here again, then, the test of internal evidence points quite unmistakably to the time of
the conquest, around 1400 B.C., rather than to any of the dates suggested by modern criticism.
Before taking our leave of Deuteronomy, a final comment should be made concerning the
remarkable predictions embodied in chapter 28, beginning with verse 49. The Documentarians
have interpreted these to refer to the invasions of Assyrian and Chaldean oppressors, and hence
have insisted that that passage itself could not have been composed until the time of Josiah or the
Exile. But a closer examination of the details reveals the inadequacy of this explanation, even
from a rationalistic standpoint. It is quite clear in the light of subsequent history that only the
Roman invasions of A.D. 70 and A.D. 135 satisfy the terms of this prophecy. Consider the
following factors: (1) The invaders are to come “from the end of the earth” (v. 49)—far more
appropriate to Rome than to Babylon. (2) Their language will be utterly alien to Hebrew—far
truer of Latin than of Babylonian, a kindred Semitic tongue (v. 49). (3) The Jews are to be
scattered among the nations, from one end of the earth to the other (v. 64)—which did not take
place at the Chaldean conquest by any manner of means. (4) There is no suggestion whatever
that there will be a return to Palestine by a remnant—as there was within a few decades of
Nebuchadnezzar’s death. (5) The captive Jews are to be conveyed to Egypt in huge numbers by
ship, and prove to be a glut on the slave market—a development which never took place in
connection with the Chaldean conquest, but which was literally fulfilled after Jerusalem fell to
the legions of Titus in A.D. 70. (Josephus indicates that 97,000 prisoners were taken at the fall of
Jerusalem, and many of them ended up in the Egyptian mines.)” The conclusion is irresistible
that this prediction could only have come by supernatural revelation, and that its fulfillment took
place centuries later than the Wellhausian date for the latest stratum of the Pentateuch.

RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

OBSERVANCE SIGNIFICANCE (or SCRIPTURE

purpose)

Saboth Day of rest in celebration of Ex. 20:8–11

(sabbaṯ šabbātôn) God’s completed work of Ex. 31:12–17
creation Lev. 23:11–12

Sabbatic Year Rest for the land Ex. 23:10–11

agriculturally; Lev. 25:2–7
Renunciation of debts

Year of Jubilee Rest for the land; Lev. 25:8–16

(šanaṯ yôbēl) Reversion of poverty Lev. 27:16–25

New Moon Monthy offering for Num. 10:10

(r˒ōs ḥôdeš) atonement Num. 28:1–15

The Theory of a Deuteronomic School

Ever since the days of Wilhelm De Wette (1805) it has become axiomatic for adherents to the
Documentary Hypothesis to date the formation of the book of Deuteronomy in official public
form as coming from the time of King Josiah in 621 B.C., a good 800 years after the death of the
purported author. We have already discussed the indefensible nature of this hypothesis in the
light of internal and external evidence. But inasmuch as scholars trained in the Wellhausen
approach shield themselves from giving any honest consideration of the difficulties precluding
the adoption of this theory, they naturally extend the implications of a Josianic date to all of the
historical books and of prophets like Jeremiah as the members of a “Deuteronomic School.” It is
only natural, therefore, that a modern myth should arise under the title of “The Deuteronomist.”
This term presumably refers to the author or authors of the canonical book of Deuteronomy, but
this Deuteronomic tradition seems to have permeated the thinking and outlook of various
prophets and historians who were active during the seventh and sixth century B.C.
The proof adduced for the origin of Deuteronomy in the time of Josiah is deduced from
references and phrases of a Deuteronomic character which are found in the writings of these
various authors. The logic is that if Deuteronomy is quoted in the seventh century, it must have
originated in that same period. But from the standpoint of legal evidence this argument proves to
be patently fallacious. It is only natural that in the writings of speakers and authors brought up in
a given religious or literary tradition extending back to earlier times, such an authoritative
scripture would be quoted or alluded to by authors who became active several centuries later.
Who can doubt that the Quran originated with Mohammed in the early seventh century A.D.? Yet
by the Documentarian logic, almost any period in subsequent Islamic history would exhibit fully
as much awareness of the teachings and pronouncements of the Quran as the Josianic authors
made of Deuteronomy or the other books of the Torah. One might as well allege that the Bible
originated in the Elizabethan era, because it is so much alluded to or quoted from in the days of
Shakespeare and Milton or the Puritan divines. In other words, we are dealing with a complete
non sequitur which would never stand up in a court of law.

19
Joshua, Judges, and Ruth

Joshua

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, this book is named after its principal character, Joshua, who
dominates the scene from start to finish. His name in the longer Hebrew form appears as
Yehōshû˓ (‫ ;)יהושע‬in the Septuagint Yēsūs, or “Jesus.” The narrative records the history of Israel
from the passage of Joshua’s army over the river Jordan to Joshua’s final retirement and farewell
speech. The theme of the book concerns the irresistible power of God’s people in overcoming the
world and taking permanent possession of their promised inheritance, provided only they
maintain a perfect trust in God’s strength and permit no sin of disobedience to break their
covenant relationship with Him.

Outline of Joshua

I. Conquest of the land 1:1–12:24

A. Joshua’s divine commission, 1:1–9
B. Preparations to cross the Jordan; the spies rescued through Rahab, 1:10–2:24
C. The crossing of the Jordan River, 3:1–4:24
D. Circumcision at Gilgal, 5:1–15
E. Capture of Jericho, the assurance of victory, 6:1–27
F. Failure at Ai; the putting away of sin; the ultimate triumph, 7:1–8:29
G. The altar at Mount Ebal; the solemn reading of the law, 8:30–35
H. The alliance with the crafty Gibeonites (the first entanglement with the world), 9:1–27
I. Conquest of southern Canaan; the battle of Gibeon, 10:1–43
J. Conquest of northern Canaan, 11:1–15
K. Summary of Joshua’s campaigns, 11:16–12:24
II. Dividing of the inheritance, 13:1–22:34
A. Joshua’s instructions concerning the division, 13:1–7
B. Assignment to the eastern tribes, 13:8–33
C. Assignment to the western tribes, 14:1–19:51
D. Appointment of the cities of refuge, 20:1–9
E. Appointment of the Levitical cities, 21:1–45
F. Eastern tribes dismissed to their homes in Transjordan, 22:1–34
III. Joshua’s final charge to Israel, 23:1–24:33

As R. K. Harrison observes, “The Hebrew text of the book of Joshua is in quite good condition,
and seldom requires emendation. The LXX version indicates attempts to expand the Hebrew
through the addition of words and phrases. Certain LXX manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus
exhibit wide variations, and may possibly represent an independent textual tradition from that of
the MT. The Lucianic recension of the LXX appears to have been corrected by reference to
Palestinian Hebrew sources” (R. K. Harrison, Old Testament Introduction, p. 678).

Joshua: Authorship and Date

It is reasonable to deduce that this book was largely composed by Joshua himself. Intimate
biographical details are given from the very first chapter that only Joshua himself could have
known (although of course he could have later imparted them to others). Joshua 24:26 records
that the general himself wrote out his own farewell charge as quoted in the first twenty-five
verses of the chapter. Earlier in the book (5:1, 6) we find passages in the first person plural, such
as, “Jehovah had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we
were passed over.” Such language as this certainly points to the work of an eyewitness who
participated in the events himself.
Other references point to a very early date of composition, even if not precisely within the
lifetime of Joshua. Canaanite cities are mentioned by their archaic names; for example, Baalah
for Kirjath-jearim (15:9), Kirjath-sannah for Debir (15:49) and Kirjath-arba for Hebron (15:13).
Moreover, according to 13:4–6 and 19:28, Sidon was the most important city of Phoenicia, thus
indicating a period before the twelfth century B.C. (when Tyre began to attain the ascendancy).
According to 9:27, the Gibeonites “unto this day” were still “hewers of wood and drawers of
water” around the tabernacle, even as Joshua had appointed them. This could no longer have
been said in the reign of Saul, if we may trust the indication of 2 Sam. 21:1–9, that some of the
Gibeonites had been massacred and their special status changed by King Saul. Certainly the
references to Jerusalem (such as 18:16, 28) show very clearly that at the time of writing it was
inhabited by the Jebusites and had not yet been captured by the Hebrews under King David.
On the other hand, there is evidence of later editorial work in the inclusion of events which could
not have occurred until after Joshua’s death. Not only do we have the notice of his decease
(24:29–30) and the generalization that “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the
days of the elders who lived after Joshua” (24:31), but we also find reference to Othniel’s
capture of Kirjath-arba (15:13–17; Judg. 1:9–13) and the migration of a portion of the Danite
tribe to the extreme north of Israel (19:47; cf. Judg. 18:27–29). Taking all this evidence together,
it seems to point to substantial composition of Joshua by the man after whom the book was
named, and supplementary material (also inspired) very likely by Eleazar or his son Phinehas.
As we have already seen (chap. 6, p. 89), rationalist critics of the Wellhausen school have
attempted to include Joshua with the five books of the Pentateuch, calling the whole collection
the Hexateuch. They consider the basic material to come from J and E, but with considerable
editorial work and redaction by the “Deuteronomic School.” Later editorial work is thought to
have been contributed by a redactor of the priestly school, who made his major insertions in
chapters 13–21. But it should be pointed out that the biblical evidence makes it very difficult to
hold that the Pentateuch never had any separate existence apart from Joshua.
T’he most significant evidence is found in the fact that only the Pentateuch was held by the
Samaritan sect to be canonical. We know from the Samaritan form of the Pentateuchal text that
these northern sectarians even in post-exilic times considered themselves to be heirs of the
Israelite ten tribes. Many of the deviations from the Masoretic Text of the five books of Moses
consist of additions which make it explicit that God had chosen Mount Gerizim in the
Ephraimite territory to be the place for His holy sanctuary, rather than the southern center of
Jerusalem. Obviously the motivation for this is nationalistic propaganda, but the book of Joshua
contains many elements which would have commended it to Samaritan nationalism. For
example, it makes prominent mention of Shechem in Ephraim as an important center and a city
of refuge. Its chief hero is an Ephraimite general, Joshua the son of Nun. It contains a record of
the solemn reading of the law by the whole congregation of Israel between Mount Ebal and
Mount Gerizim. Therefore the only possible explanation for the failure of the Samaritans to
include Joshua in their authoritative canon was that it was not actually a part of the Mosaic
Torah. The Torah must, therefore, have existed as a separate Pentateuch at the time of the
Samaritan schism in the late 6th century B.C.
 The Tell El-Amarna Correspondence

In 1887 an accidental discovery led to the unearthing of an entire file of ancient diplomatic
correspondence at the site of the ancient Akhetaton (Tell el-Amarna), the newly built capital of
King Amenhotep IV (Akhnaton). These letters were written on clay tablets in Babylonian
cuneiform, which was the accepted language for international correspondence during the
Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty. A preliminary examination of the contents of these tablets
convinced C. R. Conder that they represented a Canaanite version of the sequence of events
connected with the conquest of Canaan by the armies of Joshua. In 1890 he brought this
correspondence to the attention of the public in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, in an article
entitled “Monumental Notice of Hebrew Victories.” In the same year, H. Zimmern categorically
affirmed that in the Amarna correspondence we have nothing less than a contemporary record of
the Hebrew invasion of Canaan (in the Zeitschrift des deutschen Palastinavereins). These early
investigators pointed out the frequent occurrence of the name “Habiru” in the communications
from King ’Abdi-Hepa of Jerusalem, who reported to the pharaoh with the greatest alarm that
these invaders were carrying everything before them. Further study of the tablets convinced H.
Winckler that marauding armies associated with the cuneiforn characters SA.GAZ were to be
equated with the Habiru. Very frequent references to these SA.GAZ people are to be found in the
communications of Canaanite princelings all the way up to Sidon in Phoenicia.
Later discoveries at Mari and Nuzi, as well as at Babylon, revealed the fact that Habiru figured in
the history of the Mesopotamian valley as early as the beginning of the second millennium B.C.
They are referred to in the Sumerian inscriptions of Rim-Sin of Larsa and in Akkadian texts from
Hammurabi’s Babylon and Zimri-Lim’s Mari, as well as of Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin of the
Elamite dynasty. Often the name is preceded by the determinative meaning “warrior.” Hittite and
Old Babylonian texts indicate that contingents of the SA.GAZ received regular rations from the
state, manned royal garrisons, and worshiped gods who were invoked in state treaties. The Hittite
texts from Boghazkoi furnish evidence that the Habiru and the SA.GAZ are the one and the same
people, for each form of the name appears in parallel columns of bilingual texts, and the gods of
the SA.GAZ are there referred to as the gods of the Habiri. In the Mari correspondence they
appear as mercenary troops in the employ of leaders like Yapah-Adad (cf. ANET, p. 483).
It is not certain how the characters SA.GAZ were pronounced, whether as Habiru or by some
such term as Habbatu (“plunderer, robber”) as is given in the ancient dictionaries. Many scholars
have conjectured that SA.GAZ represented an appellative or descriptive term rather than the
name of any particular tribe or people; whereas Habiru referred to a definite ethnic group.
Others, however, have rejected an ethnic significance even for Habiru because of the great
diversity in types of names which are attributed to individuals listed as Habiri. Many of those
from Old Babylonian sources and those at Nuzi are Akkadian Semitic names, but those from
Alalakh are mostly non-Semitic.
In the light of the foregoing evidence, it may reasonably be questioned whether the Habiru were
a definite, homogeneous face, or whether the name was attached to migratory groups of people
who possessed no real property and were not attached to the soil like the general populace of the
land in which they happened to reside. Thus they may have been a group somewhat akin to the
gypsies of modern times whose racial background is shrouded in mystery, but whose common
characteristic is that they never settle down in one place, preferring to wander from region to
region as they may find a living. This at least is the theory advanced by Moshe Greenberg in his
monograph entitled, “the Hab/piru” (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1955). He
thus would account for their appearance as mercenaries in the employ of foreign governments or
as dependents who hired themselves out as serfs or slaves. Apparently the etymology for the
name Habiru points to the basic significance of “one who passes over” or “one who passes
through (the land),” coming from the verb ˓ābar (“to pass through”).
It is open to question, however, whether the term Habiru necessarily connoted inferior social
status. Meredith Kline points out that in some cases, as at Alalakh, the Habiri are found at the
head of city administration as government officials, or else as chariot-owning maryannu (the
highest of the warrior castes). Peace treaties were made with them, which would hardly have
been effected with a mere dependent or servile populace. Kline personally regards the Habiri as a
more or less homogeneous ethnic stock of warrior tribes, who sold their services as mercenaries,
and in some cases (like the Goths of the late Roman empire) settled down to become landowners
and officials. In some instances, as at Alalakh, they became so culturally integrated with the
people among whom they lived that they even adopted the non-Semitic personal names prevalent
in that locality. He feels that they were largely allied with the Huffian or Mitannian governments,
and thus respected by them, even though they were feared and shunned in many non-Hurrian
regions. Kline does not believe that they can successfully be linked with the Israelite Hebrews
either ethnically, religiously, or culturally. But this conclusion hardly does justice to the data of
the Amarna Letters.
Discoveries at Ugarit make it evident that Habiru were the same people referred to as the ’Apiru
in Egyptian records. A text published by Virolleaud contains a list of towns subject to provide
corvee labor for the king of Ugarit; and this bilingual text shows on the Akkadian side, “Aleppo
of the SA.GAZ” (Hal-bi lu-mes SAG-GAZ), and on the Ugaritic side, reads: “Aleppo of the ’Apirim”
(Hlb ’prm). Apparently it was possible by dialectic modification to pronounce the middle b of
Habiru or ’Abiru as a p, for so it appeared in Ugaritic and also in Egyptian. Hence the Habiru
were “people from the other side,” or “migrants,” and this term may have been applied to those
of diverse national origin. It is only in the Hebrew records that we find the name in the form ˓ibrɩ̂
(Hebrew) used to refer to a single racial stock, namely the descendants of Abraham, “the
Hebrew.” Thus Abraham may have been called “the Habiru” by the Canaanites because of his
mode of life and because he was a foreigner; but then his descendants retained this designation in
honor of their ancestor and transmuted it into an ethnic term. Such an interpretation of the name
Habiru and its apparent equivalent, SA.GAZ, leaves room for the possibility that some non-
Israelite peoples were involved in the convulsive movements of Joshua’s time, and participated
in the invasions of the northerly regions at least.
Moshe Greenberg and many of his predecessors have rejected this identification of the Habiru
(SA.GAZ) with the Israelite invasion, both because of the diversity of names appearing in some
of the Mesopotamian records, and also because of the reported activity of the SA.GAZ in Syria
and Phoenicia. The objection is based on the ground that there is no allusion to any such
northerly military operations in the Hebrew records. In answer to this it ought to be pointed out
that there is nothing in Joshua to discourage the belief that the northernmost tribes, such as Asher
and Naphtali, who settled right next to the Phoenician territory, may have conducted expeditions
against Tyre, Sidon, and even Byblos (from which city most of the Phoenician correspondence is
derived). Joshua does not pretend to list all the military operations into which the individual
tribes entered after the major united campaigns had come to a close. This, then, is hardly a
decisive objection to the identification of Habiru with Hebrews. Other objections raised by
Greenberg include the consideration that according to the Amarna correspondence it was
possible for individuals or even a whole town to become Habiri by deserting the Egyptian side.
For example, in the letter numbered 185 in the Mercer edition (J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna
Tafeln [Leipzig: Hinrich, 1908–15], hereafter EA, 111:44), Rib-Addi declares that the
inhabitants of Lachish have “become Habiri.” Even an Egyptian such as Amanhatbi
(Amenhotep) of Tushulti could escape reprisal for his misdeeds by fleeing to the SA.GAZ (EA
95:63). But it should be pointed out that these terms of expression do not necessarily signify the
attainment of full citizenship, so to speak, in the ranks of the Habiri, but may simply be a way of
indicating a change of allegiance or the formation of a new alliance. Joshua records how the
Gibeonite or Hivite league effected a treaty of peace with the conquering Israelites, although of
course they did it by stratagem. There can be little doubt that other Canaanite communities made
terms with the irresistible invaders in order to avoid total destruction. The Canaanite
principalities which maintained the conflict against Israel were of course bitterly resentful of
those who had gone over to their side, and they may well have referred to this maneuver as
“becoming a Habiru.”
Greenberg also makes the observation that the SA.GAZ seem to have operated in relatively
small, unrelated groups here and there throughout the land of Canaan, and thus do not present in
any sense the same picture as the narrative in the book of Joshua, where we have great bodies of
troops from all twelve tribes operating under a single command. But there are two things to be
said about this observation. In the first place, the letters may have come from widely separate
periods of time (for virtually none of them contain any dates) ranging all the way from 1400 B.C.
to the latter part of the reign of Akhnaton. Those references to Habiru activity which seem to
imply the operation of smaller bodies of troops may have been written in the latter period after
the main campaigns had been completed. Second, it should be observed that some of the letters
give the very distinct impression that Habiri have come into the land in great force and are
subjugating large tracts of land at a time.
One noteworthy example of the latter type is EA No. 286 from Abdi-Heba: “As truly as the king,
my lord, lives, when the commissioners go forth I will say, ‘Lost are the lands of the king! Do
you not hearken unto me? All the governors are lost; the king, my lord, does not have a [single]
governor [left]!’ Let the king turn his attention to the archers, and let the king, my lord, send out
troops of archers, [for] the king has no lands [left]! The Habiru plunder all the lands of the king.
If there are archers [here] in this year, the lands of the king, my lord, will remain [intact], but if
there are no archers [here] the lands of the king, my lord, will be lost!” Again in EA No. 288 he
pleads, “Let the king care for his land. The land of the king will be lost. All of it will be taken
from me; there is hostility to me. As for the lands of Sheeri (Seir] and even to Gintikirmal [i.e.,
Mount Carmel] there is no peace to all the regions, but to me there is hostility.” This obviously
refers to the second phase of Joshua’s campaign, when he was subduing the central portion of
Palestine (although, of course, he never took over Jerusalem itself as a permanent Hebrew
possession).
Many excellent scholars who have thoroughly gone over the evidence feel certain that the Habiri
of the Amarna correspondence are to be identified with the Hebrews of Joshua’s army. Edward
Meyer in Geschichte des Altertums (1928) states: “The substantial identity of the Hebrews or
Israelites with that part of the Habiri of the Amarna tablets who were invading Palestine in
Amarna times is … beyond doubt.” As evidence he pointed to the fact that those cities whose
governors maintained correspondence with Egypt according to the Amarna archives were
Megiddo, Ashkelon, Acco, Gezer, and Jerusalem, precisely those cities which the Israelites were
late in capturing. On the other hand, as F. Bohl pointed out in Kanaanaer und Hebraer (1911, p.
93), those cities which had already fallen to the Israelite advance or had joined ranks with
Joshua’s forces are represented by no communications at all—cities like Jericho, Beersheba,
Bethel, Gibeon, and Hebron. In connection with the solemnization of the national covenant with
Jehovah at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim near Shechem (cf. Josh. 8:30–35), it is highly
significant that Abdi-Hepa of Jerusalem accused that city-state of defecting to the Habiru cause
(EA 289): “Or shall we do like Labayu, who gave the land of Shechem to the Habiru?” If there
was some informal understanding between Joshua and the Shechemites, there would have been
no difficulty about holding this religious assembly near that powerful city.
The objection has also been made that there are few names appearing in the Amarna letters
which are also discoverable in the text of Joshua. With the partial exception of Japhia (Yāpɩ̄˓),
king of Lachish, none of the royal names seems to correspond. Ingenious attempts have been
made to correlate Abdi-Heba (Abdu-Heba) with Adonizedek but these involve major
improbabilities. On the other hand, this lack of correspondence is not to be wondered at in view
of the unsettled nature of the times, when local dynasts were apt to be dethroned or assassinated
in swift succession. Most of the royal names given in Joshua pertain to the earliest phases of the
conquest, and it may simply be that most of the Amarna letters come from a later period. In this
connection it might be mentioned that one letter, EA 256, from Mut-Ba’lu of Megiddo, suggests
to the Egyptian regent Yanhamu that he is on intimate enough terms with Benenima (also read as
Benilima) and Yashuya to ask them the whereabouts of the prince of Pella, who has absconded
to parts unknown. The question arises whether “Benenima” is equivalent to Benjamin and
“Yashuya” to Joshua. Possibly the remark is ironical and rhetorical in nature and is meant to
imply that the Israelite invaders have something to do with the disappearance of Ayab of Pella.
Without further knowledge of circumstances, it is impossible to decide this question one way or
the other.
At this point, a word should be said about the six known occurrences of the name ’Apiru (or,
according to J. A. Wilson, ’Eperu) in the records of the Egyptian empire between 1300 and 1150.
In three cases the ’Apiru appear as unskilled workmen in the quarries; once as temple property
(in a list of temple serfs at Hieropolis in the reign of Rameses III) and once as workers at a
stable. Wilson comes to the conclusion that the term was applied to foreigners in Egyptian
service who occupied the status of slaves or serfs. In one remaining reference, however, they are
mentioned as foreign mercenary troops. Hence we are to understand Apiru in the broader
nonethnic sense of Habiru, just as in the cuneiform records which antedate the Amarna
correspondence.
The earliest reference is found in the tomb of Puyemre in the reign of Thutmose III. Next comes
the tomb of Antef, in that same reign; then it appears in a list of booty recorded in the Memphis
Stela of Amenhotep II (ANET, p. 247), written at the conclusion of his second Asiatic campaign
(which contains an item of 3,600 ’Apiru carried off as captives). Next, Seti I in the smaller Beth-
shean Stela (cf. ANET, p. 255) records an encounter with the ’Apiru of Mount Yarumtu (i.e.,
Jarmuth). A Nineteenth-Dynasty story of the capture of Joppa in the reign of Thutmose III refers
to the ’Apiru as potential horse stealers (ANET, p. 22). Among the offerings dedicated to the
temple of Amon at Heliopolis by Rameses III is a group of slaves referred to as ’Apiru (ANET,
p. 261). Rameses IV mentions 800 ’Apiru of the bowmen of ’Antiu—in this case apparently
mercenaries.
From a survey of the Egyptian references, it will be easily seen that no deductions may be drawn
in favor of either the early date or the late date for the Exodus. The ’Apiru of the time of
Thutmose III may well have been the Israelites; those mentioned by Rameses II, Rameses III,
and Rameses IV may have been Hebrews who did not join the Exodus, or who were perhaps
taken captive by Egyptian raiders during the time of the Judges. As for the ’Apiru whom
Amenhotep II encountered in central Palestine, they could hardly have been the Israelites
themselves (who were at that time still confined to the wilderness of Sinai), but wandering
freebooters who were called by the term Habiru, used in its larger and more general sense.
In conclusion we may state that while there are many problems and individual details which have
yet to be cleared up, there is a sufficient agreement between the data of the Amarna
correspondence and the account in the book of Joshua to establish a close connection between
the two.

The Long Day of Joshua

The book of Joshua records several miracles, but none perhaps as noteworthy or as widely
discussed as that pertaining to the twenty-four hour prolongation of the day in which the battle of
Gibeon was fought (10:12–14). It has been objected that if in fact the earth was stopped in its
rotation for a period of twenty-four hours, inconceivable catastrophe would have befallen the
entire planet and everything on its surface. While those who believe in the omnipotence of God
would hardly concede that Jehovah could not have prevented such catastrophe and held in
abeyance those physical laws which might have brought it to pass, it does not seem to be
absolutely necessary (on the basis of the Hebrew text itself to hold that the planet was suddenly
halted in its rotation. Verse 13 states that the sun “did not hasten to set for an entire day.” The
words did not hasten seem to point to a retardation of the movement so that the rotation required
forty-eight hours rather than the usual twenty-four. In support of this interpretation, research has
brought to light reports from Egyptian, Chinese, and Hindu sources of a long day. Harry Rimmer
reports that some astronomers have come to the conclusion that one full day is missing in our
astronomical calculation. Rimmer states that Professor Pickering of the Harvard Observatory
traced this missing day back to the time of Joshua; likewise Dr. Totten of Yale (cf. Ramm,
CVSS, p. 159). Ramm reports, however, that he has been unable to find any documentation to
substantiate this report.
Another possibility has been deduced from a slightly different interpretation of the word dôm
translated in the KJV as “stand thou still.” This verb usually signifies “be silent,” or “cease, leave
off.” Dr. E. W. Maunders of Greenwich and Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton Seminary
therefore interpreted Joshua’s prayer to be a petition that the sun cease pouring down its heat
upon his struggling troops so that they might be permitted to press the battle under more
favorable conditions. The tremendously destructive hailstorm which accompanied the battle
lends some credence to this view, and it has been advocated by men of unquestioned orthodoxy.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that verse 13 seems to favor a prolongation of the day: “And
the sun stood in the half [or midway point] of the sky, and it did not hasten to set for about an
entire day.”
The Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament suggests that a miraculous
prolongation of the day would have taken place if it seemed to Joshua and all Israel to be
supernaturally prolonged, because they were able to accomplish in it the work of two days. It
would have been very difficult for them to make an accurate measurement of time if the sun
itself did not move (i.e., the earth did not rotate) at its normal rate. They add another possibility,
that God may have produced an optical prolongation of the sunshine, continuing its visibility
after the normal setting time by means of a special refraction of the rays.
In the New Bible Commentary the commentator Hugh J. Blair suggests that Joshua’s prayer was
made early in the morning, since the moon was in the West and the sun was in the East. The
answer came in the form of a hailstorm which prolonged the darkness and thus facilitated the
surprise attack of the Israelites. Hence in the darkness of the storm, the defeat of the enemy was
completed. And we should speak of Joshua’s “long night” rather than Joshua’s “long day.” This
of course is essentially the same view as that of Maunders and Wilson. Such an interpretation
necessitates no stopping of the earth on its axis, but it hardly fits in with the statement of 10:13,
and is therefore of dubious validity.

The Extermination of the Canaanites

In certain instances such as the capture of Jericho and of Ai, Joshua records that the Israelites
completely exterminated the inhabitants according to the command of Jehovah Himself. It needs
to be emphasized that the responsibility for this extreme measure rested with God (i.e., if this
account is to be trusted) rather than with the Hebrews. This needs to be emphasized in view of
the frequent statement heard in some quarters that the “primitive minded, half savage” Israelites
performed this atrocity because of their backward state of religious development. The text makes
it very plain that Joshua was simply carrying out divine orders when these inhabitants were
indiscriminately put to the sword.
What was the justification for this total destruction? The subsequent history of Israel serves to
illustrate very pointedly the grave danger that remained for Israel so long as the Canaanites were
permitted to live in their midst. Given over as they were to the most degenerate forms of
polytheism and sexual impurity, these depraved inhabitants of the land were sure to exert a
baneful influence and spread a deadly contagion among the covenant people of God. Recent
archaeological discovery has brought to light concrete testimony to the crass and brutal features
of the Canaanite faith as displayed in the literature of the Ras Shamra Tablets. Throughout the
region there seems to have been a readiness to incorporate into the indigenous worship all the
foreign cults that were practiced bv the surrounding heathen nations. Thus we find a series of
hyphenated gods: Teshub-Hepa (the Hurrian storm-god and his consort), the Osiris-Isis cult from
Egypt; Shamash (the sun-god) and Ishtar (the bloodthirsty goddess of war and love) and
Tammuz (a fertility god) from Mesopotamia. Many sites have yielded serpent stelae and
Ashtoreth images with sexual symbols. In view of the corrupting influence of the Canaanite
religion, especially with its religious prostitution the abomination of Baal-peor (as in Num. 25)
and infant sacrifice, it was impossible for pure faith and worship to be maintained in Israel
except by the complete elimination of the Canaanites themselves, at least in those areas which
the Hebrews were able to occupy. Much of the periodic spiritual decline and apostasy which
marked the history of Israel during the time of the Judges is attributable to a toleration of the
Canaanite inhabitants and their degenerate religion in the midst of the land.

THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL

JUDGES ENEMY YEARS YEARS APPROX. REFERENCE

NATIONS OF OF DATE
OPPRESSION DELIVERANCE B.C.

Othniel Mesopotania 8 40 1374–1334 3:9–11

Ehud Moab 18 80 1316–1235 3:15–30

Ammon
Midian

Shamgar Midian ca. 1230 3:31

Deborah Canaan 20 40 1216–1176 4:4–5:31

Barak Canaan 20 40 1216–1176 4:4–5:31

Gideon Midian 7 40 1169–1129 6:11–8:35

Tola Amalek 23 1120–1097 10:1–2

Jair Amalek 22 1120–1097 10:3–5

Jephthah Ammon 18 6 1085–1079 11:1–12:7

Ibzan Ammon 7 1079–1072 12:8–10

Elon Ammon 10 1072–1062 12:11–12

Abdon Ammon 8 1062–1054 12:13–15

Samson Philistia 40 20 1095–1075 13:2–16:31

Judges

The Hebrew title for this book is Shôpheṭɩ̂ m, meaning “judges” or “executive leaders.” The
Septuagint title Kritai means the same thing, Judges. This title is derived from the type of
government or leadership which dominated the Israelite tribes in the interval between the death
of Joshua and the coronation of King Saul. The basic theme of the book is Israel’s failure as a
theocracy to keep true to the covenant even under the leadership of men chosen of God to deliver
them from oppression by the pagan world. The frequent and repeated failures of the twelve tribes
to remain true to God and His holy law prepared the way for the institution of a central
monarchy.

Outline of Judges

I. Partial conquest of Canaan by Israel, 1:1–2:5

II. Reasons for survival of Canaanite remnants, 2:6–3:6

III. Oppression under Cushan-Rishathaim, deliverance by Othniel, 3:7–11

IV. Oppression under Eglon of Moab, deliverance by Ehud, 3:12–30

V. Exploits of Shamgar, 3:31

VI. Oppression under Jabin of Hazor, deliverance by Deborah and Barak, 4:1–24

VII. Song of Deborah, 5:1–31

VIII. Oppression under Midian, deliverance by Gideon, 6:1–8:35

IX. Career of the tyrant Abimelech, 9:1–57

X. Judgeships of Tola and Jair, 10:1–5

XI. Oppression under Ammonites, deliverance by Jephthah, 10:6–12:7

XII. Judgeships of Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, 12:8–15

XIII. Oppression under Philistines, the exploits of Samson, 13:1–16:31

XIV. Micah’s priest and the Danite migration, 17:1–18:31

XV. Atrocity at Gibeah and the Benjamite war, 19:12–1:25

Judges: Date of Composition

Internal evidences point to some period in the early monarchy, but prior to David’s capture of
Jerusalem (ca. 990 B.C.). The expression occurring in 18:1 and 19:1, “There was at that time no
king in Israel,” seems to imply composition during the early period of the monarchy, before the
unhappy age of the divided kingdom when once again troubles and disasters came to afflict the
nation. The greatest likelihood is that the book was completed early in the reign of David; but
Judg. 1:21, “The Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day,” is
most reasonably construed to refer to the period prior to David’s capture of Jerusalem and his
appointment of it to be the capital of the Hebrew kingdom. Judg. 1:29 states that the Canaanites
were still dwelling in Gezer rather than submitting to Israelite sovereignty. This certainly points
to a time before the king of Egypt captured the city of Gezer and bestowed it on Solomon as a
dowry for his daughter (ca. 970 B.C.). Some portions of the book maintain a viewpoint antedating
the time of David, for 3:3 refers to Sidon as the chief city in Phoenicia rather than Tyre (which
began to overshadow Sidon soon after the twelfth century B.C.).
One apparent difficulty with an early date of composition is furnished by Judg. 18:30: “And
Jonathan, the son of Gershom … he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of
the captivity of the land.” If this refers to the Assyrian conquest of 732 when Tiglath-pileser III
took over the northern territory of the kingdom of Samaria, this verse at least would seem to
come from the late eighth century if not later.
Unger (IGOT, p. 292) suggests that this verse might possibly have been inserted by a later
editor—a rather questionable proposition. Young and Steinmueller have raised the question as to
whether the word for “land” (˒ereṣ) was original, and inclined to the view that it should be
amended to “ark” (˒ārōn), which would involve simply the change of one consonant (final nūn
instead of final tsadhe). The amended phrase “the captivity of the ark” would then refer to the
disaster which befell the Israelites at the battle of Shiloh in the year that Eli died. Yet it is not
easy to see how this would have much relevance to what happened at the northern tip of Israelite
territory in the tribe of Dan. Nevertheless Moeller (GATE, p. 150) has pointed out the close
relationship between Judg. 18:30 and 1 Sam. 4:21 (The glory is departed from Israel: because the
ark of God was taken). In both verses the same verb gālâ (“go into captivity”) is used, the verbal
form appearing in Samuel and the noun form in Judges. Moreover, a close connection is made in
Judg. 18:31 between the institution of the idolatrous worship in Dan and the existence of the
legitimate worship of Jehovah in Shiloh. In the light of these data, the substitution of “ark” for
“land” may perhaps be justified.
But a third and simpler suggestion would be that “the captivity of the land” might refer to a
crushing military defeat and deportation at the hand of Dan which took place some time in the
latter period of the judges in the course of bloody border warfare. Standing at the northern flank
as it did, the inhabitants of the city of Dan might well have been overwhelmed by foreign
invaders just as suddenly as they themselves captured the site from its former inhabitants (cf.
Judg. 18:27–28). Thus construed, Judg. 18:30 refers simply to the land of Dan, and does not
necessarily indicate any later time of composition than the reign of David.

Authorship and Unity of Composition of Judges

While the approximate time of composition may be deduced from the information furnished
above, namely 1000 B.C., there is no clear evidence as to the identity of the author. His
standpoint was unmistakably prophetic, for he measures Israel’s history by the standard of
faithfulness to Jehovah’s covenant. (It should be noted that the purpose of this book is not to
glorify Israel’s ancestors, as some writers have alleged, but rather to glorify the grace of the God
of Israel.) It would be natural to suppose that either Samuel himself or else some student or
disciple of his might have been responsible for the compilation of this history. Whoever the
author was, he seems to have made use of original sources, some of which at least were in the
northern Israelite dialect, such as Judg. 5 (the song of Deborah) and the Gideon cycle (chaps. 6–
8), where we find several occurrences of the relative pronoun še (rather than the usual ˓ašer).
Whatever the prior sources, the unity of arrangement and structure is unmistakable. All the
author’s material has been arranged according to a unitary plan exhibiting a single dominant
idea: Israel’s welfare depends upon her spiritual relationship to Jehovah. Characteristic formulas
are used which introduce or bring to a close each stage in the narrative. A characteristic
introduction is, “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord” (cf. 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1;
10:6; 13:1). Often a section is closed by the comment “and the land had rest [a certain number of
years]” as in 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28. Moeller (GATE, p. 147) points out that the fourteen judges are
so arranged that Othniel and Samson stand alone at the beginning and at the end of the series, but
those who come in between are usually connected in pairs. Thus Shamgar (3:31) appears as a
brief adjunct to Ehud (3:12–30); Barak is of course paired up with Deborah; and there is a fairly
clear connection between Gideon and his natural son, Abimelech.

Problems of Chronology of Judges

If all the terms of service performed by the various judges are added end to end, along with the
stated periods of oppression, they form a consecutive total of approximately 410 years. But the
long date of 480 years given in 1 Kings 6:1 seems to allow for only 292 years between the
judgeship of Othniel and that of Eli. We must therefore conclude that many of these careers of
service overlapped or were even contemporaneous. The statement in Judg. 10:7, “The Lord …
sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon,” clearly
indicates that Samson and Jephthah must have been almost contemporaneous, since the
Ammonite oppression and that of the Philistines occurred at approximately the same time. J. B.
Payne has worked out a basic chronology of the six most important judges ranging from Othniel
in 1381 B.C. to Samuel whose career ended in 1050 B.C. Confirmation of the soundness of this
method of computation is furnished by the remark of Jephthah in Judg. 11:26 where he reckons
the interim between the Israelite occupation of Heshbon and the time of the Ammonite war as
300 years. This would allow for a Transjordanian occupation somewhere between 1400 and 1100
B.C. It should be remembered that no long date is given for the whole period of the judges in the
book of Judges itself; hence there is no reason why several of the periods of judgeship should not
have been contemporaneous.

Judges: Archaeological Contributions to an Understanding of This Era

Extensive discussion has already been devoted to the relevance of the Tell el-Amarna letters to
the period of conquest after General Joshua. It may be fairly said that a survey of the data
furnished by these letters indicates that the Hebrew conquest, after the initial successes resulting
from combined effort, became greatly slowed down in pace. Many of the city-states defeated in
battle with Joshua were permitted to reoccupy their respective capitals and continue their
struggle to survive. Thus Lachish, for example, was roundly defeated by Joshua some time
between 1400 and 1390 (cf. Josh. 10:32), but Tell el-Hesi (now identifed with Eglon, not
Lachish) does not seem to have been completely destroyed by fire until around 1230 B.C.
(Excavations there have recovered potsherds written in Egyptian hieratic recording the deliveries
of wheat up to the “year 4” of some pharaoh, who on the basis of the ceramic series is believed
by Albright and others to have been the Pharaoh Merneptah.) Late Bronze remains at Tell Beit
Mirsim (which until recently has been identified with Debir) indicate that it was not destroyed
until around 1200 B.C. Archaeologists date the fall of Megiddo (see Joshua 12:21) between 1150
and 1050. Of course it was not necessary that the Israelite conquerors make a complete
destruction of all the cities which they initially took by storm, but in the course of time, as the
Hebrew population increased, they were able to take more effective control over the territory the
Lord had granted them.
Another important feature of this period was the persistence of Egyptian authority, at least into
the twelfth century B.C. It has already been noted that Joshua and Judges fail to mention the
maintenance of Egyptian power along the principal trade routes through Palestine. As stated
before, this silence cannot successfully be explained by the late date theory of the Exodus, for no
mention is made in the Hebrew record of the successful raid of Merneptah in 1229 B.C., nor of
the persistence of Egyptian authority in key centers like Megiddo and Beth-Shean, where
inscriptions bearing the name Rameses III (1198–1167) have been discovered. A careful
synchronism has been worked out by John Garstang between the various periods of “rest”
mentioned in Judges and the establishment of effective control by Egypt in Palestine. The
policing of the main arteries of commerce by Egyptian troops would naturally inhibit
aggressiveness on the part of the Canaanite nations without necessarily affecting too drastically
the life of the Israelites themselves, who largely kept to the hills (cf. Judg. 1:19) in the earlier
stage of their occupation. Consequently there would not be too much occasion for mentioning
the Egyptians by name, and it may well have been that there was a natural reluctance to refer to
them at all.
As for the Philistines, considerable discussion has been devoted to the question of when they first
settled in the southwest coast of Palestine. Because of an inscription of Rameses III at Medinet
Habu recording a naval victory over the Philistines about 1195 B.C., many critics have assumed
that it was their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians which first impelled them to settle along the
Palestinian coastline. They therefore conclude that every mention of Philistines prior to 1195 B.C.
is necessarily anachronistic, whether in Gen. 21, Josh. 13, or Judg. 3. According to this
interpretation, neither Abraham nor Isaac could have found any Philistines at Gerar as they are
recorded to have done (cf. Gen. 21:32, 34; 26:1, 8, 14, 15, 18). But the fact that Philistine raiders
were driven back by Rameses III to the Palestinian littoral by no means constitutes proof that
there could have been no Philistines there before that time. Biblical references show that they
were a heterogeneous people including several distinct groups such as the Kaphtorim, the
Keftim, the Cherithites, and the Pelethites. The probabilities are that these various groups came
in successive waves of migration from the island of Crete. Even in the Minoan period, the
inhabitants of Crete were enterprising traders well before Abraham’s time. As such they would
have had every incentive to establish trading centers on the Palestinian coastline for the purposes
of commerce.

The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter

A final word should be said about an episode in Judges which has occasioned much perplexity
and has often led to erroneous conclusions. Apparently Jephthah offered up his daughter as a
human sacrifice on the altar, in fulfillment of his “rash” vow (11:30, 31; cf. v. 39). The term for
“burnt offering” is ˓ôlâ, which everywhere else signifies a blood sacrifice wholly consumed by
fire upon the altar. But, as Keil and Delitzsch show, this interpretation as a literal human
sacrifice cannot stand in the light of the context.
1. Human sacrifice was always understood, from the days of Abraham (for whose son, Isaac, a
ram was substituted by God) to be an offense and an abomination to Yahweh, being expressly
denounced and forbidden in Lev. 18:21; 20:2–5; Deut. 12:31; 18:10. There is no evidence that
any Israelite ever offered human sacrifice prior to the days of Ahaz (743–728 B.C.). It is
inconceivable that God-fearing Jephthah could have supposed he would please the Lord by
perpetrating such a crime and abomination.
2. His daughter was allowed two months of mourning, not to bewail her approaching loss of life,
but only to bewail her virginity (betûlɩ̂ m) (Judg. 11:37–38).
3. It is stated in verse 39 that after Jephthah had performed his vow and offered her as a “burnt
offering,” “she knew not a man.” This would be a very pointless and inane remark if she had
been put to death. But it has perfect relevance if she was devoted to the service of Jehovah at the
door of the tabernacle the rest of her life. (For references to the devoted women who performed
service in connection with the national cultus, cf. Ex. 38:8 and 1 Sam. 2:22; also Anna in the
days of Jesus—Luke 2:36–37.) The pathos of the situation in this instance did not lie in
Jephthah’s daughter devoting herself to divine service, but rather in the sure extinction of
Jephthah’s line, since she was his only child. Hence, both he and she bewailed her virginity.
There was no human sacrifice here.

Ruth

This book bears as its title the name of the principal character whose biography is related within
its pages. The etymology of this name (‫ )רות‬is uncertain; some have suggested a Moabite
modification of the Hebrew re˓ût, “friendship, association.” The purpose of the book is to relate
an episode in the ancestry of king David which accounted for the introduction of non-Israelite
blood into his family line. It also teaches the far-reaching scope of the grace of God who is ready
to welcome even Gentile converts to the fellowship of His redeemed people. Perhaps most
important of all, this brief narrative is designed to exhibit the function of the gō˒ēl, or kinsman-
redeemer.

Outline of Ruth

I. Migration and sojourn in Moab, 1:1–5

II. Ruth’s choice to return with Naomi to Judah, 1:6–18

III. The mournful homecoming to Bethlehem, 1:19–22

IV. Boaz, a friend in need, 2:1–23

V. Redemption law invoked, 3:1–18

VI. Boaz’ acceptance of his responsibility as gō˒ēl, 4:1–16

VII. Promise and posterity, 4:17–22

Ruth: Date of Composition

The historical setting of this little book is laid in the time of the Judges (Ruth 1: ), and it seems to
have been composed at about the same time as the larger work. It could hardly have been written
earlier than the time of King David, since he is mentioned in it by name (4:22). Had it been
written as late as the time of Solomon, it is quite likely that David’s famous son also would have
been listed in the notice of Ruth’s descendants.
Critics of the Liberal school insist on a date later than the reign of Josiah, inasmuch as Ruth
seems to betray a knowledge of Deut. 25, and Deuteronomy was (according to them) composed
just before Josiah’s reform. Most critics date it about 550 B.C. during the time of the Exile, but
others have looked to a period some one hundred years later, feeling that it was intended as a
counterblast to Nehemiah’s strict enforcement of the laws against marrying foreign wives. It is
interesting to note that W. E Albright expresses a preference for an earlier date than Josiah’s
time, regardless of its possible dependence upon Deuteronomy. In the Alleman-Flack Old
Testament Commentary, he refers to the demonstration by Millar Burrows that the legal usage
described in connection with the marriage of Boaz and Ruth represents a stage much earlier than
the Pentateuchal laws respecting levirate marriage. On this questionable basis, therefore,
Albright says, “We cannot date the bulk of Ruth after the seventh century, and a date as early as
the ninth century for the underlying poem is quite possible.”

KINSMAN-REDEEMER AS A MESSIANIC TYPE

REQUIREMENT FULFILLMENT IN CHRIST

Be a blood relative Christ born of a woman

Be able to purchase forfeited Christ had the merit to pay the price
inheiritance for sinners

Be willing to buy back the forfeited Christ willingly laid down His life
inheiritance

Be willing to marry the wife of the The Church, as the Bride of Christ
deceased kinsman

In the interests of the later date, some critics have pointed to alleged Aramaisms such as lāhēn in
1:13 and mārā˒ in 1:20. It is true that lāhēn exists in Aramaic as a word for “therefore,” but as a
Hebrew term it may be rendered “to them” in the sense of “for those (things).” While it is true
that mārā˒, “bitter,” is spelled in an Aramaic way, its Hebrew equivalent for an identical sound is
only slightly varied in spelling. Moreover, since inscriptions have been found as early as the
ninth century B.C. containing both Canaanite and Aramaic spellings in the same text, these two
questionable words furnish very tenuous grounds for a late dating of the book.
As for the historicity of the narrative, Ruth appears to give an accurate account of the customs
during the early period. It was perfectly natural at that era (before the Moabites had become
embittered by Israelite overlordship) for a Jewish family to take refuge in Moab during a time of
drought and famine. Under those conditions it would be natural also for young people to fall in
love and get married with the inhabitants of the land. The fact that David was descended from a
Moabitess would furnish a ready explanation for his seeking refuge with the king of Moab
during the time he was being pursued by Saul. As Young remarks, “The very fact that Ruth, the
ancestress of David, was a Moabitess, is in itself an argument for the historicity of the book.”

Ruth: Basic Teachings of This Book

The basic teachings of Ruth may be summed up under three headings.

1. It affords a foreshadowing of the enlarged blessing to come: Gentiles are capable of being
joined to the commonwealth of Israel upon condition of repentance and of faith in Jehovah.
2. God’s marvelous and unexpected providence is exhibited also by the inclusion of a Gentile in
the royal lineage of the Messiah (cf. Matt. 1:5).
3. The kinsman-redeemer serves as a Messianic type, the gō˒ēl who fulfills the following
qualifications and functions of his kinsmen: (a) he must be a blood relative (even as Christ
became a blood relative of man by the Virgin Birth); (b) he must have the money to purchase the
forfeited inheritance (4:10—even as Christ alone had the merit to pay the price for sinners); (c)
he must be willing to buy back that forfeited inheritance (4:9—even as Christ laid down His life
on His own volition); (d) he must be willing to marry the wife of a deceased kinsman (4:10—
typical of the bride and groom relationship between Christ and His Church). From this
standpoint, therefore, the little book of Ruth is one of the most instructive in the Old Testament
concerning the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus.

20
1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings
IN ITS EARLIER form the Hebrew Bible seems to have regarded the two volumes of Samuel as a
single book. The same was true of 1 and 2 Kings. It was on this basis that Josephus in the first
century A.D. reckoned the books of the Old Testament as twenty-two in number (cf. chap. 5, pp.
76–77). But the Alexandrian Jews brought both Samuel and Kings together as books of
“Kingdoms” (Basileiōn) and then sub-divided each of them so as to form four books of
“kingdoms.” The Latin Vulgate in the course of time dropped the term books of kingdoms (Libri
Regnōrum) and shifting to the Hebrew division between Samuel and Kings, came out with the
titles which the Western church has employed ever since. (But the Eastern church still speaks of
1 and 2 Samuel as 1 and 2 Kingdoms and refers to 1 and 2 Kings as 3 and 4 Kingdoms.) Not
until the Bomberg edition of 1517 did the Hebrew Bible make the partition of Samuel and Kings
into two books. The purpose of these four books was to record the founding of the Hebrew
monarchy, and its varying fortunes and ultimate demise in 587 B.C.
 1 and 2 Samuel

First and Second Samuel include (a) the career of Samuel, the kingmaker, (b) the career of Saul,
the unfaithful king who, forsaking the covenant, became a tyrant; (c) the career of David, a truly
theocratic king who founded the permanent and valid dynasty out of which the Messiah was to
come.

Outline of 1 Samuel

I. The career of Samuel and the deliverance from Philistia, 1:1–7:17

A. Samuel’s mother and her song, 1:1–2:10
B. Samuel’s apprenticeship in the Tabernacle (or temple), 2:11–3:21
C. The disaster of Shiloh and the death of Eli, 4:1–22
D. The captivity of the ark in Philistia, 5:1–12
E. The return of the ark to Israel, 6:1–21
F. Samuel drives out Philistine oppressors and leads a revival, 7:1–17
II. The rise of King Saul, 8:1–15:35
A. The Israelites petition for a king, 8:1–22
B. Saul anointed by Samuel and vindicated by victory over the Ammonites, 9:1–11:15
C. Samuel’s final address, of warning and counsel 12:1–25
D. Victories of Saul and Jonathan over the Philistines, 13:1–14:52
E. The Amalekite campaign and Saul’s disobedience, 15:1–35
III. The decline of Saul and the rise of David, 16:1–31:13
A. David anointed by Samuel and introduced to the royal court, 16:1–23
B. David’s deliverance of Israel by slaying Goliath, 17:1–58
C. David’s flight from Saul’s jealousy, 18:1–20:42
D. David’s wanderings as an outlaw, 21:1–30:31
E. Saul’s final battle and death on Mount Gilboa, 31:1–13

Outline of 2 Samuel

I. David’s career as king over Judah and all Israel, 1:1–14:33

A. David’s lamentation over the death of Saul and Jonathan, 1:1–27
B. The crowning of David at Hebron; the war with Abner, 2:1–32
C. Abner’s defection and murder by Joab, 3:1–39
D. The assassination of Ishbosheth, 4:1–12
E. Establishment of national and religious unity, 5:1–6:23
F. God’s covenant with David, the Messianic King, 7:1–29
G. Extension of David’s rule to the limits of the Promised Land, 8:1–10:19
H. David’s sin with Bathsheba and his ultimate repentance, 11:1–12:31
I. The crime of Amnon and Absalom’s revenge, 13:1–14:33
II. The closing phase of David’s reign, 15:1–24:25
A. Absalom’s rebellion and final defeat, 15:1–18:33
B. David’s restoration to power, 19:1–20:26
C. The famine and the Gibeonites’ revenge upon Saul’s descendants, 21:1–14
D. Later wars with the Philistines, 21:15–22
E. David’s psalm of praise and final testimony, 22:1–23:7
F. The list of David’s mighty men, 23:8–39
G. David’s sin in numbering the people; the subsequent plague stopped at the site of the
future temple, 24:1–25

Samuel: Date of Composition

Judging from internal evidences, the books of Samuel could hardly have been written prior to the
death of Solomon. In 1 Sam. 27:6 we infer that the divided monarchy had already begun because
of the words, “Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah until this day.” Although there is no
obituary of David, yet the record of his last words would clearly imply the knowledge of his
death. Indications of a precise terminus ad quem seem to be lacking, and none of such
conservative writers as Steinmueller, Young, or Moeller can come to a more definite conclusion
than that the composition took place between 930 and 722. The author seems to be ignorant of
the fall of Samaria, and so it is reasonable to date the composition of the work prior to the
captivity of the Ten Tribes.
Rationalist critics analyze the book as mainly composed of two documents (Pfeiffer) or else
possibly of three (Eissfeldt—who specifies L, J, and E). Some parts of it they hold to be
Solomonic, with other installments added until about 550 B.C. by a redactor of the so-called
“Deuteronomic school.” It is noteworthy that there are sufficient evidences of an early date in
some sections of Samuel such that even a divisive critic like R. H. Pfeiffer could assign the
earliest stratum of this book to a tenth-century author such as Ahimaaz, the priest. Yet other
portions are construed to be as late as the exile, because of the references to Levites to be found
in 1 Sam. 6 and 7. The same general technique of analysis is employed as in Pentateuchal
criticism, with the endeavor to isolate parallel accounts and doublets which show such
“inconsistencies” with each other as to indicate authorship in different periods of Israel’s history.
For example, there are alleged to be two diametrically opposed attitudes toward the
establishment of a monarchy in Israel: that of 1 Sam. 7 and 8 (involving divine condemnation of
the people’s lack of faith in desiring a king), and that of chapter 9 (especially v. 16), with its
gracious promises of blessing to the king whom Samuel is to anoint.
What these critics fail to see is that condemnation of an untheocratic motive on the part of the
nation does not preclude God’s blessing upon the human instrument He has chosen to lead His
people under the new form of government which they have wrongly preferred. We find
numerous instances of this type of divine response to human errors in the course of Hebrew
history. For example, despite the crimes perpetrated by David in acquiring Bathsheba as his wife,
God graciously elected her second son, Solomon, to be David’s successor, the most glorious of
his descendants. The artificiality of higher-critical stratification is pointed up by the occurrence
of interlocking allusions in later parts of the narrative to the earlier sections, for often these
allusions cut across all the lines of division which the critics have set up. Certain characteristic
phrases in the supposedly distinct sources recur with such frequency as to render the whole
analytical technique highly dubious.
Although division into post-Davidical strata cannot be successfully made out, there is little doubt
that the compiler of the books of Samuel employed prior written sources, as for example the
Book of Jasher referred to in 2 Sam. 1:18. While other written records are not referred to by
name, it is quite likely that the official archives were consulted, including the “Acts of David”
composed by Samuel, Nathan, and Gad (according to the statement in 1 Chron. 29:29).

Samuel: Preservation of the Text

For some reason, the text of 1 and 2 Samuel seems to have been more poorly preserved in the
Masoretic recension than any other book in the Bible. A likely explanation is that the official
temple text drawn up in the inter-testamentary period relied upon a very ancient Vorlage (or
earlier manuscript from which it was copied) which contained occasional lacunae (perhaps due
to a worm-eaten or frayed condition resulting from overuse). This, for example, would account
for the absence of any number preceding the word for “years” in 1 Sam. 13:1 (ASV). But a study
of the Septuagint version of Samuel indicates that its Vorlage was in somewhat better condition
than that of the Masoretic tradition, and hence it is occasionally useful for the textual criticism of
these two books. Several important fragments have been discovered in the Qumran caves
containing a Hebrew text which is now and then closer to that of the Septuagint than to the MT.8
(Yet even the Septuagint offers no help in discovering the missing number in 1 Sam. 13:1.) Or
again, in 1 Sam. 12:11 a letter ˓ayin apparently dropped out of the name Abdon, one of the
twelfth-century judges (cf. Judg. 12:13–15); hence his name comes out as B-D-N rather than ˓-B-
D-N and is vocalized by the Masoretes as “Bedan.”

Samuel: Alleged Inconsistencies in the Narrative

Many of the inconsistencies which divisive critics have pointed out in their analysis of the books
of Samuel can be made out only by a deliberate policy of artificial dissection. If the text is read
and accepted as it stands, a perfectly obvious reconciliation is apparent. Yet there are a few
passages where a harmonizing explanation is not quite so ready at hand.
Some have insisted that the tribal background of Samuel himself was variously given in 1 Sam. 1
and 1 Chron. 6:27–28, the latter making Samuel out to have been a Levite of the subtribe of
Kohath. Yet 1 Sam. 1:1 asserts that Elkanah was an Ephraimite, since his home was in
Ramathaim-zophim. But actually this latter verse says nothing about Elkanah’s tribal affiliation,
and only indicates his place of residence. According to the Torah, the Levites had no particular
tribal territory of their own, but were to be settled in forty-eight different Levitical cities
scattered among the twelve tribes (cf. Num. 35:6). There is no reason why Ramathaim or Ramah
may not have been one of the cities in Ephraim set apart for the Levites.
Another difficulty has been found in the twofold introduction of young David to King Saul. In 1
Sam. 16:14–23 he is introduced as a harpist employed to soothe Saul’s troubled spirit. In 1 Sam.
17:55–58 Saul apparently has to be introduced to him all over again. But a more careful study of
this “second introduction” indicates that Saul’s only concern at this point was to learn the name
of David’s father, or rather what kind of man his father was, in view of Saul’s policy of attaching
the most valiant warriors in his kingdom to his personal bodyguard (1 Sam. 14:52). It was quite
appropriate for him to look into the possibilities of appointing Jesse himself or some of his other
sons to his elite corps, after being treated to an example of the prowess of his youngest son in
slaying the giant Goliath. First Samuel 18:1 suggests that a lengthy conversation ensued after
Saul put his question to Abner concerning David, and we may reasonably infer that much more
than mere names would have been discussed at that time.
One interesting problem arises in connection with David’s encounter with Goliath. Although 1
Sam. 17 states that Goliath was killed by David, 2 Sam. 21:19 (ASV) indicates that the giant met
his death at the hands of Elhanan. Even though the Septuagint follows closely the reading of the
MT in this latter verse, it is quite obvious that a scribal error has marred the transmission of the
original text. Fortunately 1 Chron. 20:5 affords great assistance in discovering how the error took
place. In Chronicles the verse reads: “And Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of
Goliath the Gittite.” The copyist of 2 Sam. 21:19 apparently mistook the sign of the direct object
(˒eṯ) for the word beyt (probably because the manuscript was smudged or eroded before the final
t), and thus changed Laḥmi into “the Bethlehemite” (Hebrew: B-t-l-ḥ-m-y); then for a similar
reason he misread the word brother (˒-ḥ) for the sign of the direct object (˒-t), which meant that
Goliath himself became the object of the slaying instead of Goliath’s brother. In the fifth century
B.C. the Hebrew ḥet (h) greatly resembled the appearance of the letter taw (t) and also the letter
yod had become very tiny. Additional evidence that the verse was poorly copied in 2 Sam. 21 is
afforded by the intrusion of the name Oregim after Jaare. As 1 Chron. 20 shows, this word
˒ōregɩ̂ m, meaning “weavers,” belonged only after the word for “beam.” This transmissional error
must have arisen at a time when the letter ḥet already resembled taw in appearance, but before
the Septuagint was translated; that is, between the fifth century and the third century B.C.
Other parallels which are allegedly inconsistent include those two occasions when David had
Saul in his power so that he could have killed him in his sleep. (But under the peculiar conditions
accompanying the pursuit of guerrillas in mountainous terrain, it is quite possible that this could
have happened twice.) Or again, in the several episodes of reconciliation and alienation between
Saul and David, temporary reestablishment of friendship would be followed by a sudden
outbreak of murderous hatred. And yet it should be recognized that in view of Saul’s dementia
and progressive deterioration under the eroding influence of a besetting envy and a profound
sense of insecurity, this sequence of events is altogether true to life. Neither here nor in any of
the other less significant examples which Source Critics have brought up are there any genuine
discrepancies to be found.

1 and 2 Kings

As has already been indicated, these two books were originally counted as one in the Hebrew
canon. The title is altogether appropriate in view of the subject matter, for the books contain a
record of the careers of the kings of Israel and Judah from the time of Solomon to the downfall
of the Jewish monarchy before the armies of Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. As pointed out before,
the Septuagint reckons these two books as 3 and 4 Kingdoms (Basileiōn).
The theme of these two books was to demonstrate on the basis of Israel’s history that the welfare
of the nation ultimately depended upon the sincerity of its faithfulness to the covenant with
Yahweh, and that the success of any ruler was to be measured by the degree of his adherence to
the Mosaic constitution and his maintenance of a pure and God-honoring testimony before the
heathen. The purpose of this record was to set forth those events which were important from the
standpoint of God and His program of redemption. The author had no intention of glorifying
Israel’s heroes out of nationalistic motives; hence he omitted even those passing achievements
which would have assumed great importance in the eyes of a secular historian. His prime
concern was to show how each successive ruler dealt with God in his covenant responsibilities.

Outline of 1 and 2 Kings

I. The reign of Solomon, 1 Kings 1:1–11:43

A. David’s final arrangements and the suppression of Adonijah, 1:1–2:11
B. The beginning of Solomon’s reign, 2:12–46
C. Solomon’s prayer for wisdom after his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter, 3:1–28
D. Solomon’s administration of the kingdom, 4:1–34
E. Solomon’s erection of the temple, 5:1–7:51
F. Dedication of temple and bestowal of God’s promise, 8:1–66
G. Solomon’s wealth and glory; the Queen of Sheba, 9:1–10:29
H. Solomon’s apostasy, decline and death, 11:1–43
II. Early kings of the Divided Monarchy, 12:1–16:28
A. Rehoboam’s folly; the revolt under Jeroboam, 12:1–14:31
B. Abijah and Asa of Judah, 15:1–24
C. Nadab, Baashah, and Elah of Israel, 15:25–16:14
D. Zimri and Omri of Israel, 16:15–28
III. Period of alliance between Judah and Israel, 16:29–2 Kings 9:37
A. Ahab and Elijah, in the test on Mount Carmel, 16:29–18:46
B. Ahab and Elijah until Ahab’s death at Ramoth-Gilead, 19:1–22:53
C. Ahaziah of Israel, 2 Kings 1:1–18
D. The anointing of Elisha and death of Elijah, 2:1–25
E. Jehoram and Jehoshaphat against the Moabites, 3:1–27
F. Miracles of Elisha; the cleansing of Naaman, 4:1–5:27
G. Wars with Ben-Hadad and the deliverance of Samaria, 6:1–7:20
H. Edom revolts from Joram of Judah, who is defeated by Hazael of Damascus (8:20–29)
I. Elisha’s mission to Hazael and Jehu; the death of Jezebel, 9:1–9:37
IV. Decline and fall of Israel, 2 Kings 10:1–17:41
A. Jehu’s extermination of the house of Omri and the worshipers of Baal, 10:1–36
B. Athaliah succeeded by Joash of Judah, 11:1–12:21
C. Jehoahaz and Jehoash of Israel, 13:1–25
D. Amaziah and Azariah (Uzziah) of Judah, 14:1–22; 15:1–7
E. Jeroboam II, 14:23–29
F. Last kings of Israel: Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, Hoshea, 15:8–31
 G. Jotham and Ahaz of Judah, 15:32–16:20
H. Fall of Samaria; its resettlement by semiconverted pagans, 17:1–41
V. Jewish monarchy after the fall of Samaria, 18:1–25:30
A. Hezekiah and Sennacherib, 18:1–19:37
B. Hezekiah’s illness; his display of wealth to the Chaldean envoys, 20:1–21
C. Wicked King Manasseh; his son Amon, 21:1–26
D. Reforms of Josiah, 22:1–23:30
E. Final kings and the fall of Jerusalem, 23:31–25:21
F. Assassination of Gedaliah; favor shown to Jehoiachin, 25:22–30

Kings: Date of Composition

As to the sources of this work, it is obvious that the prophetic author has drawn even more
largely upon prior written documents than did the author of Judges or Samuel. Three such
documents are actually named: (1) The Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41); (2) The
Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (passim); (3) The Book of the Chronicles of the
Kings of Israel (passim). It may fairly be inferred that these three works largely consisted in the
notations of the official court chronicler or recorder, the mazkɩ̂ r mentioned in 2 Sam. 8:16. Also
not cited but obviously borrowed is a fourth source, Isaiah 36–39, large sections of which have
been taken over almost verbatim in 2 Kings 18–20. (Since the author of 2 Kings carries the
narrative of Hebrew history to the fall of Jerusalem and thereafter, it is obvious that he borrowed
from Isaiah rather than the other way around. Some critics have argued that the Isaiah chapters
were copied from Kings, but the evidence on which they have relied can just as well be
interpreted to favor the opposite conclusion.
As to the date of the composition, it is obvious from the foregoing that prior written sources were
relied upon, coming from as early a period as the reign of Solomon. Final composition is to be
dated after the fall of Jerusalem, probably in the early exile; yet it is possible that only the final
chapter comes from exilic times, inasmuch as the frequently recurring phrase “unto this day”
throughout the book indicates unmistakably a pre-exilic perspective, 1 Kings 8:61; 9:13, 21;
10:12; 12:7; 22:19; 2 Kings 7:9; 17:34 (8x).
Talmudic tradition asserts that Jeremiah was the author of Kings (Baba Bathra, 15a), a
suggestion which commends itself to Steinmueller. Since the author speaks from a consistently
prophetic standpoint and is a man of great literary ability, it is possible that Jeremiah may have
composed everything except the final chapter. One very strong consideration in favor of this
conjecture is that there is no mention whatever of Jeremiah himself in the chapters dealing with
Josiah and his successors. Apart from modesty on the part of the author, it is hard to account for
the failure to mention so important a factor in Judah’s history as was the ministry of Jeremiah,
her last great prophet. As for the final chapter, it seems to have been written by someone
dwelling in Babylon, rather than in Egypt, where Jeremiah met his death.
Liberal criticism regards the books of Kings as composed of two main strata, one a pre-exilic
source which knows nothing of the fall of Jerusalem and regards worship on the high places
outside Jerusalem as perfectly legitimate; the second stratum comes from the work of the
Deuteronomic school which flourished about 550 B.C., (according to the theory), which looks
back upon the fall of Jerusalem and the judgment of exile as already accomplished facts, and
explains them as the result of failing to limit the worship of Jehovah to the temple at Jerusalem.
This school of thought allegedly reinterpreted Israelite history so as to imply condemnation even
for King Solomon for sacrificing at Gibeah prior to the erection of his temple. It goes without
saying that the theory of a Deuteronomic school depends upon the Josianic dating of the book of
Deuteronomy, the evidence for which is being increasingly recognized as too slender for
successful defense. That the attitude of Deuteronomy frequently emerges in the moral judgments
of 1 and 2 Kings may be freely admitted, but this is admirably accounted for by the Mosaic
authorship of that book. (The same is true of the Deuteronomic influences which have been
noted in the books of Samuel and Judges.) Obviously the authors of these earlier works were
familiar with Deuteronomy as well as the rest of the Torah, and considered it to be authoritative
as being authored by Moses himself.

KINGS OF ASSYRIA

KING DATE (B.C.)

Shalmaneser III 858–824

Adad-nirari V 810–758

Assur-dan III 772–754

Assur-nirari V 754–745

Tiglath-pileser III 745–727

Shalmaneser V 727–722

Sargon II 722–705

Sennacherib 705–681

Esarhaddon 680–669

Ashurbanipal 669–626

Kings: Problems of Chronology

In the earlier days of Old Testament scholarship, considerable difficulty was encountered in
harmonizing the numbers given in the books of Kings for the reigns of the various rulers of the
Northern and Southern Kingdoms. In the case of the Jewish kings particularly, when all the
regnal years were added, they came to a total considerably greater than that which could have
elapsed between the death of Solomon and the fall of Jerusalem. Later research, however,
demonstrated the fact that in many instances the crown prince or immediate successor to the
throne was formally crowned and his reign officially begun even in the lifetime of his father. In
the case of Uzziah, to take an extreme example, he seems to have been crowned as secondary
king back in 790 after his father, Amaziah, had been reigning but six years. He became sole king
in 767 when Amaziah died. In 751 he was smitten with the plague of leprosy and had to be set
aside from his governmental responsibilities, for the most part at least. His son Jotham was then
crowned (in 751) and reigned until 736; but he apparently did not die until 732 or 731, according
to 2 Kings 15:30. In 743 his son Ahaz was crowned as coregent, and reigned until 728 (when he
was apparently deposed, although he did not die until 725). Thus it transpired that between 743
and 739 Judah was ruled over by no less than three kings at once: Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz.
Much difficulty for the chronology of this period has been occasioned by the statement in 2
Kings 18:13 that Sennacherib’s invasion (of 701 B.C.) took place in the fourteenth year of
Hezekiah’s reign. From this, Edwin Thiele deduced that Hezekiah began ruling in 715, despite
the fact that all other references in 2 Kings indicate or imply that he began his joint rule with
Ahaz in 728 (2 Kings 15:30; 16:1–2; 17:1; and even 18:1, 9–10). Thiele reluctantly comes to the
conclusion concerning the Hebrew author: “He was a man deeply concerned about truth, but who
did not understand all the truth.” He buttresses this conclusion by attempting to show that
Hezekiah’s “Great Passover” must have taken place after the fall of Samaria rather than before
(even though 2 Chron. 30–31 implies that this took place about the same time as the religious
reforms which he enforced in Judah, early in his reign). As the Hebrew text now reads, there is a
dear discrepancy between 2 Kings 18:13 and all the other passages cited above. But if
“fourteenth year” is amended to “twenty-fourth year,” this points to 725 as the commencement
of Hezekiah’s sole rule after the death of Ahaz. If the type of numerical notation was used in the
Vorlage which appears in the Elephantine Papyri, it would require only the smudging of one
horizontal stroke to make a twenty-four look like a fourteen. Or if the numbers were spelled out,
then it would take only the misreading of one letter (mēm miscopied as hē) to convert “twenty-
four” (˒arba˓ ˓ešrɩ̂ m) into “fourteen” (˒arba˓ ˓ešrēh) according to the earlier orthography. In
support of this emendation is the instance of 2 Chron. 36:9, which gives the age of Jehoiachin as
eight when he ascended to the throne; whereas 2 Kings 24:8 indicates that he was actually
eighteen. Here again we have a type of manuscript error which involves a second-place digit.
Even Thiele readily acknowledges that 2 Chron. 36:9 contained such an error, and that eight
should be corrected to eighteen. Quite possibly the scribal error originated in a Vorlage of Isa.
36:1, which contained the mistaken fourteen instead of twenty-four, and had no other
chronological check points in context to ensure the accuracy of this numeral. The scribe who
copied out 2 Kings 18:13 may have deferred to this statement in Isaiah, remembering that this
was what the prophet apparently recorded. Another such example is found in 2 Chron. 2:2, which
gives the age of Ahaziah ben Jehoram as forty-two when he began to reign, whereas 2 Kings
8:26 gives it as twenty-two.
Much light has been thrown upon the chronology of the Hebrew dynasties by the synchronisms
(or simultaneous dates) contained in the Assyrian monuments. Of especial importance are the
Assyrian eponym lists which cover the history of the empire from 893 to 666 B.C. There is also
the Greek Canon of Ptolemy (who lived from A.D. 70 to 161), giving the reigns of the kings of
Babylon from 747 B.C. onward into the Graeco-Roman period. Astronomical verification of an
eclipse which Ptolemy dated as occurring in 522 B.C. has served as a valued reassurance of his
accuracy. Contemporary official monuments, such as the Black Stela of Shalmaneser III and the
Taylor Cylinder of Sennacherib, occasionally contain dated references to Israelite kings. From
such data as these it has been established that there were numerous coregencies in both Judah
and Israel, and that the years of the coregency were reckoned in the total figure for the reign of
each king involved.
Thiele has also established that there was a difference in calendar reckoning between the
Northern and Southern Kingdoms. The “non-accession-year” system of dating counted the
remainder of the calendar year in which a king was crowned to be his first year. This meant that
even though he was crowned as late as the last day of the previous year, that one day would be
counted as year one in his reign, and year two would begin on the next day when the calendar
New Year had its commencement. According to the “accession-year” system, however, the year
in which the king was crowned was not counted in the numbering at all, but year one of his reign
would commence with the following New Year. In the case of Judah, from the time of schism in
930 B.C. until about 850 the accession year system was followed. Then from the reign of
Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat to the reign of Joash ben Ahaziah (848 to 796 B.C.), the non-accession
year system of the Northern Kingdom was followed. Last, from the time of Amaziah to the fall
of Jerusalem (796 to 587 B.C.), Judah reverted to the accession-year system. As for the Northern
Kingdom, it began with the non-accession-year system in 930 and continued it till about 800 B.C.
From the time of Jehoash ben Jehoahaz to the fall of Samaria (798 to 722 B.C.) it shifted to the
accession-year method of computation. Thus it could happen that what was reckoned in Judah as
Jehoshaphat’s tenth year would be regarded in Israel as Jehoshaphat’s eleventh year.
A still further complication was introduced by the fact that the Northern Kingdom began its new
year in Nisan or Abib, the first month of the religious year. With equal consistency, the kingdom
of Judah throughout its history used the month of Tishri or Ethanim (the seventh month of the
religious year) as the first month of its secular year, and computed all dates and reigns on that
basis. Why this difference arose, it is impossible to determine; nevertheless it must be taken into
account in handling cases where there appears to be a one-year discrepancy in dating.
At this point it should be added that since chronology is a branch of historical science, it is
constantly subject to revision. Even among conservative scholars there is some divergence.
Thiele computes the time of the schism as 931 B.C., whereas Payne makes it 930. A certain
amount of flexibility must always be preserved and appropriate adjustments made as new
evidence comes in.
A more recent work on the later history of Judah has come out under the name of D. J. Wiseman,
Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings in the British Museum (1956), pp. 29–31, 70–71. The tablets
published in this work give a series of precise dates between 626 and 566 B.C. They indicate that
Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, was officially crowned November 23, 626, after
defeating the Assyrian army at Babylonia. Asshuruballit II, who assumed the Assyrian throne
after the fall of Nineveh in 612, was compelled to abandon his defenses in Haran in the year 610.
The battle of Megiddo, at which Josiah perished, took place in 609, and in the same year or the
following year, 608, Jehoiakim began his reign under the sponsorship of Necho, then shifted
allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar after the battle of Carchemish and died in 598 in a state of
rebellion against him. The epoch-making battle of Carchemish, in which Nebuchadnezzar
defeated the allied armies of Egypt and Assyria, took place in May or June of 605. Nabopolassar
died on August 16, 605, and on September 7 Nebuchadnezzar was crowned in Babylon as his
successor. In 601 the Babylonian armies were temporarily checked by the Egyptians on the
Egyptian border after a fierce battle. (This fact, not previously known, helps to explain why
Jehoiakim dared to risk rebellion against Babylon in the last years of his reign.) Jerusalem
capitulated to Nebuchadnezzar the first time on March 15 or 16, 597. In that same month
Zedekiah received his appointment as king. Last of all, Jerusalem fell in July, 587, during
Nebuchadnezzar’s third invasion.
These tablets clear up one discrepancy between 2 Kings 24:12, which dates the 597 capture of
Jerusalem as the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, and Jer. 52:28, which dates it as occurring in
his seventh year. It is apparent that at the battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar was in sole
command of the Chaldean troops, and may well have been recognized in the west as de facto
king already; hence the Jewish historian of 2 Kings regarded 605 or 604 as his first regnal year.
But in Babylon, which used the accession-year system, his reign did not officially begin until
604 or 603. Apparently Jeremiah followed the official Babylonian reckoning in this instance.
One thorny problem has arisen in connection with the date of Sennacherib’s invasion of Palestine
and siege of Jerusalem as recorded in Isa. 36–37 and 2 Kings 18–19. The monuments of
Sennacherib report such an invasion as having occurred in 701 B.C., and it has usually been
assumed that this was the time of the great crisis recorded in the Hebrew account. But the
publication by M. F. L. Macadam of Kawa Stela IV was interpreted by him to mean that Tirhaqa
would have been only nine years of age by 701, and therefore hardly competent to lead the
Egyptian army that tried unsuccessfully to defeat Sennacherib and raise the siege of Jerusalem.
On the basis of this interpretation, many scholars (including Albright) elaborated a theory that
the action with Tirhaqa implied a second invasion of Judah by Sennacherib not recorded in
extant Assyrian annals, but occurring sometime in the 680s. All of these speculations have been
rendered nugatory, however, by a later edition of Kawa Stela IV published by Leclant and
Yoyette in 1952. This second examination of the Egyptian text shows that Macadam was guilty
of a misinterpretation; it was actually Tirhaqa’s father, Piankhy, who died in 713 at the very
latest, but far more likely in 717 or 716. This means that Tirhaqa was much older than nine in
701. Macadam mistakenly assumed that there was a coregency of six years involving Tirhaqa
and his older brother, Shebitku; he was also mistaken in assigning Tirhaqa’s age at twenty,
referred to in Kawa Stela V. 17, to the year 690/689 B.C. Actually it pointed to the time just after
Shebitku’s accession in 702. As correctly interpreted, then, these texts tell us that Tirhaqa was
twenty years old in 701, when his brother summoned him to assume leadership of the campaign
into Judah. Thus he was old enough to play this responsible role, even though he was not then
the reigning king (as he had become by the time the episode was recorded in is 36 and 2 Kings
18). Kawa Stela IV:7–8 records concerning Tirhaqa: “His Majesty was in Nubia, as a goodly
youth … amidst the goodly youths whom His Majesty King Shebitku had summoned from
Nubia.” (Note that here too the later report of the incident refers to Tirhaqa as “His Majesty,”
even though he was at that time only the crown prince.)
Before leaving this discussion of the Divided Monarchy in the period of Assyrian expansion,
some mention should be made of a remarkable discovery made back in 1880 that brought to light
an historic Hebrew record from the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah. This consisted of a record
carved into the hard limestone of the Siloam tunnel which was undertaken in order to insure an
adequate water supply for the city of Jerusalem in times of siege. In six lines one of the workmen
involved in this operation incised an account of how the two gangs of workmen, digging
simultaneous from the east and from the west, finally heard each other when they were three
cubits apart, and dug through a jog which united the tunnel bore sufficiently to enable the water
from the Siloam Spring outside the city wall to flow into a large retention pool inside the
ramparts of the city. The tunnel extended for 1,200 cubits, 100 cubits below the top of the rock.
A good translation of this inscription may be found in ANET3, p. 321, and a serviceable
photograph of it appears on p. 127 of E. Wurthwein’s The Text of the Old Testament translated
from the 4th German edition and published by Eerdmans in 1979. From this text we gain a more
accurate knowledge of the exact shape of epigraphic Hebrew writing back in the late 700’s B.C.
This type of information is especially helpful in establishing what letters of the Hebrew alphabet
so resembled each other in shape as to lead to possible miscopying on the part of a scribe. Hence
it is valuable for textual criticism.

21
Introduction to the Prophets; Obadiah, Joel, and
Jonah
IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED that according to the terminology of the Hebrew Bible, the
Former Prophets include four books which we have already discussed—Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
and Kings. Although these books deal with the history of Israel, they were composed from a
prophetic viewpoint and possibly even the authors themselves may have been prophets by
profession. But the books considered in this and the next six chapters are classified in the
Hebrew Bible as the Latter Prophets. These are subdivided into the Major Prophets (Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), and the twelve Minor Prophets, whose writings could all be included in
one large scroll, which came to be known in Greek as the Dodecapropheton (“the Twelve-
Prophet Book”).

Nature of Hebrew Prophecy

By way of general definition, a prophecy is an oral or written disclosure in words through a

human mouthpiece transmitting the revelation of God and setting forth His will to man. In the
broader sense, even events, such as the crossing of the Red Sea or the episode of the brazen
serpent, may have a prophetic significance, in that their importance is not exhausted by the
historical occurrence itself. They in turn point forward to an antitypical fulfillment in the times of
the Messiah. The ordinances of the tabernacle and the priesthood were fraught with prophetic
significance, for often they provided types pointing to the person and work of the Lord Jesus.
Under this heading may be included the priesthood of Aaron, the tabernacle itself, the various
articles of furniture which it contained, and the rituals of sacrifice. In this broader sense, then, a
great portion of the Old Testament constitutes prophecy; but in the narrower sense the term is
confined to the discourses of those specially chosen and anointed men who occupied the
prophetic office.
Even among these men, however, there was a considerable number whose utterances were never
preserved in written form, although their messages are indirectly alluded to in the various
historical books. Such was the case with men like Nathan and Gad of David’s generation, and in
the later period Shemaiah, Ahijah, Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha, Oded, and many others. These are
known as the oral prophets, since their messages were transmitted only by word of mouth. In
most cases their manifestos were addressed largely to contemporary crises in the life of Israel
and did not have a permanent significance for coming generations in the same sense and to the
same degree as did the writings of the prophetic canon. But where a revelation of God contained
information relevant to the succeeding ages, the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to commit their
messages to writing. These, then, are the documents which have been preserved to us as the
Major and Minor Prophets.

Nature of the Prophetic Office

The responsibility of the Old Testament prophets was not principally to predict the future in the
modern sense of the word prophesy, but rather to tell forth the will of God which He had
communicated by revelation. The Hebrew word “to prophesy” is nibba˒ (the niphal stem of
nābā˒), a word whose etymology is much disputed. The most likely derivation, however, seems
to relate this root to the Akkadian verb nabû, which means to “summon, announce, call.” In the
prologue of Hammurabi’s Code, the Babylonian king asserts that he was nibit Bêl (“called of
Baal”) and that the gods nibba˒ (“called or appointed”) him to be their viceroy on earth. Thus the
verb nibba˒ would doubtlessly signify one who has been called or appointed to proclaim as a
herald the message of God Himself. From this verb comes the characteristic word for prophet,
nābɩ̂ ˒ (“one who has been called”). On this interpretation the prophet was not to be regarded as a
self-appointed professional whose purpose was to convince others of his own opinions, but rather
he was one called by God to proclaim as a herald from the court of heaven the message to be
transmitted from God to man.
A second designation often applied to the earlier prophets particularly was the man of God (˒ɩ̂ š
˓Elōhɩ̂ m). This title implied that the prophet must be a man who belonged first and foremost to
God, was wholly devoted to His cause, and enjoyed His personal fellowship. Therefore he could
be trusted to transmit God’s word, because he spoke only as God enlightened him and guided
him to speak.
A third term applied to the prophets was that of seer (ḥōzeh or rō˒eh, in Hebrew). The
implication of this title was that the prophet would not be deluded by external semblance or the
deceitful appearances of the material world, but rather would see the issues as they really were
from the perspective of God Himself. As a seer, the prophet might receive special visions and ab
extra revelations from the Lord and thus be qualified to convey the spiritual realities which other
men could not see. As a seer he would avoid evolving ideas or opinions of his own mind and
would confine himself to that which God had actually shown him. Related to the term ḥōzeh was
ḥāzôn or ḥāzût, a significant word for “prophecy” which appears in the title of Isaiah’s
prophecies (Isa. 1:1). Or else the verb “to see” (ḥāzah), might be so employed as in Amos 1:1
(“the words of Amos which he saw”).
In the earliest period, the prophetic function was assigned to the Levitical priests, who were
charged with the responsibility of teaching the implications of the Mosaic law for daily conduct
in the practical issues of life. But even the Torah envisioned the possibility of a special class of
prophets distinct from the priests and playing a role analogous to that of Moses (cf. Deut. 18—a
passage which not only predicts the Messianic Prophet but also establishes the prophetic order as
such). As the priesthood became increasingly professionalistic in attitude and lax in practice (as
for example Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli), a new teaching order arose to maintain the
integrity of the covenant relationship in the heart of Israel. Some of these prophets came from the
priestly tribe of Levi, such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but the majority came from the other tribes.

MIRACLES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

SCRIPTURE MIRACLE (OR EVENT)

Gen. 19:26 Lot’s wife becomes pillar of salt

Ex. 3:2 Burning bush

Ex. 7:10–12 Aaron’s rod changed into a serpent

Ex. 7–11 Plague’s of Egypt

Ex. 14:21–31 Red Sea divided

Ex. 15:23–25 Waters of Marah sweetened

Ex. 16:14–35 Manna in the Wilderness

Ex. 17:5–7 Water from the rock at Meribah

Lev. 10:1, 2 Nadab and Abihu destroyed

Num. 16:32–35 Earth swallows Korah

Num. 17:1–13 Aaron’s rod budded

Num. 20:7–11 Water from the rock at Meribah

Num. 22:21–35 Baalam’s donkey speaks

Josh. 3:14–17 Israelite passage through the Jordan

Josh. 6:6–20 Destruction of the walls of Jericho

Josh. 10:12–14 Sun and moon delayed at the close of the

day

1 Sam. 5:1–12 Dagon falls before the Ark of God,

worshipers afflicted with hemorrhoids
and death

1 Sam. 7:10–12 Thunderstorm in the battle with the

Philistines

2 Sam. 6:7 Uzzah killed after touching the Ark

1 Kings 13:4–6 Jeroboam’s hand withered before the new

atler at Bethel, then suddenly healed

1 Kings 17:14–16 Widow’s grain and oil multiplied

1 Kings 17:17–24 Widow’s son raised from the dead

1 Kings 18:30–38 Elijah’s sacrifice on Mt. Carmel consumed

by fire; priests of Baal totally failed

1 Kings 18:41–45 Elijah obtains rain after drought

1 Kings 20:30–38 Wall of Aphek

2 Kings 1:10–12 Ahaziah’s soldiers consumed by fire

2 Kings 2:7, 8–14 The Jordan divided before Elijah

2 Kings 2:11 Elijah translated

2 Kings 3:16–20 Water provided for Jehoshaphat’s army in

desert

2 Kings 4:2–7 The cruse of oil does not fail the widow

2 Kings 4:32–37 The Shunammites’ son restored to life by

Elisha

2 Kings 4:42–44 One hundred men fed with 20 loaves

2 Kings 5:10–14 Naaman healed of leprosy

 2 Kings 6:5–7 Iron axe-head floats

2 Kings 6:18–20 A Syrian expeditionary force blinded

2 Kings 13:21 Elisha’s bones resurrect the dead

2 Kings 19:35 Destruction of Sennacherib’s army by

plague

2 Kings 20:9–11 The sun goes backward on the dial of Ahaz

2 Chron. 26:16–21 Uzziah is afflicted with leprosy

Dan. 3:19–27 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

Dan. 6:16–23 Daniel in the lion’s den

Jonah 2:1–10 Jonah in the belly of the whale

Function of Hebrew Prophecy

As has already been suggested, the function of the prophet went beyond mere prediction of
things to come. Four principal elements may be defined in the ministry of the Old Testament
prophets.
1. The prophet had the responsibility of encouraging God’s people to trust only in Yahweh’s
mercy and redemptive power, rather than in their own merits or strength, or in the might of
human allies. Just as Moses admonished the Israelites to trust God for the impossible at crisis
times when they faced the menaces of the Egyptians or Canaanites, so the great eighth-century
prophets exhorted their countrymen to put their whole dependence upon the delivering power of
the Lord rather than upon the assistance of human allies such as Assyria or Egypt.
2. The prophet was responsible to remind his people that safety and blessedness were
conditioned upon their faithful adherence to the covenant, and that this adherence involved not
only doctrinal conviction, but also a sincere submission of their will to obey God with their
whole heart and to lead a godly life. Apart from such submission, no amount of sacrifice or
ritualistic worship could satisfy the Lord. In other words, a saving faith involves a sanctified
walk. This is perhaps the foremost emphasis in the prophets: “Bring no more vain oblations …
your hands are full of blood.… Cease to do evil; learn to do well.… Come now, and let us reason
together” (Isa. 1:13–18). It is not that the prophets regarded moral living as the essence of
religion, but rather they understood a godly walk to be the unfailing product of a genuine saving
faith. They recognized that all men were guilty before God and utterly without hope apart from
His redeeming grace (cf. 1 Kings 8:46; Ps. 14:2–3; 130:3; Prov. 20:9; Isa. 53:6; 59:4, 12–16;
64:6; Mic. 7:2); no one could be saved by his own virtue or goodness. But on the other hand,
Israel needed to be reminded (as does the professing church in modern times) that God would
accept no substitute for a sincere faith which expresses itself by a law-honoring life. As various
moral issues came up, it was naturally the function of the prophets to interpret and apply the law
of Moses to contemporary conditions, They never regarded their teaching prerogative as more
than ancillary and interpretive of the uniquely authoritative Torah.
3. The prophet was to encourage Israel in respect to the future. All too often, the efforts at revival
sponsored by godly kings or promoted by the prophets on their own initiative, succeeded in
reaching only a small percentage of the population. The controlling majority of the nation would
remain hardened in disobedience. Such intransigence could only mean an eventual incurring of
divine wrath according to the warnings of Lev. 26 and Deut. 28, until the covenant nation would
be finally expelled from the land of promise. The question naturally arose, would these divine
judgments bring Israel to an end as a holy nation set apart to witness to the heathen of the one
true God? God’s answer through His prophets was that after devastation and exile would come
the restoration of the believing remnant of Israel to the land. The nation would yet fulfill its
destiny as a testimony to the Gentiles under the leadership of the coming Messiah. This
assurance of the future, of the ultimate triumph of the true faith, was well calculated to encourage
the sincere believers within Israel to keep faith with God and keep on trusting Him in the face of
all contrary appearances and hostile circumstances.
4. Hebrew prophecy was to seal the authoritativeness of God’s message by the objective
verification of fulfilled prophecy. Thus in Deuteronomy 18 the test of a true prophet was stated
to be the fulfillment of what he predicted. Sometimes these fulfillment would come in a
relatively short time, as in the case of the scoffing nobleman of 2 Kings 7, who derided Elisha’s
claim that the price of flour would drop to a mere fraction of famine rates within twenty-four
hours. On other occasions the fulfillment was so far in the future as to be beyond the experience
of the generation living at the time the prophecy was given. In such a case, naturally the
verification would be of benefit only to future ages; nevertheless, circumstances might call for
this type of confirmation. “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I
declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them” (Isa. 42:9). “And who, as I, shall call, and
shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? And the things
that are coming, and shall come, let them show unto them. Fear ye not, neither be ye afraid; have
not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses” (Isa. 44:7–8).
This last utterance was connected with a prediction of the liberation of the Jews by Cyrus, an
event which was not to take place for 150 years. Again and again the phrase recurs—especially
in Jeremiah and Ezekiel—as future events are foretold: “And they shall know that I am Yahweh”
(i.e., the covenant-keeping God of Israel). This knowledge was to come to observers after the
predicted judgments actually befell the threatened offenders. It was recognized by all that such
fulfillment of predictive prophecy would provide objective evidence incapable of any other
explanation than that He who imparted the prediction was the same Lord of history who would
bring its fulfillment to pass. They rightly saw that any other attempted explanation would involve
a surrender of man’s reason to an authoritarian demand on the part of the dogmatic rationalist for
a blind faith in his logically untenable position.

Obadiah
This shortest book in the Old Testament, consisting of only twenty-one verses, bears the
distinction of being the most difficult of all the prophecies to date. Even Conservative scholars
have offered conflicting conjectures which range all the way from the reign of Jehoram ben
Jehoshaphat (848–841 B.C.) to 585, soon after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans (a
date preferred by Luther). Most Liberal scholars prefer 585 as the time of composition, although
a few, like Pfeiffer, divide it up into two different sources; the later of which was written at some
time during the Exile or soon after the fall of Babylon in 539.

Outline of Obadiah

I. Coming destruction of Edom, 1–9

A. The downfall of impregnable Sela, 1–4
B. The city to be plundered, devastated, and forsaken, 5–9
II. Cause of Edom’s judgment: her malice against Israel, 10–14
III. Coming day of the Lord, 15–21
A. Impending judgment upon Edom and the rest of the heathen, 15, 16
B. Future deliverance of Israel, 17–20
C. Ultimate messianic kingdom, 21

Obadiah: Time of Composition

As already indicated, some scholars place the authorship of this little book in the period
immediately following the fall of Jerusalem. Others, such as J. H. Raven and J. D. Davis, prefer
to date it in the reign of Ahaz (742–728 B.C.), and interpret its historical allusions as referring to
his defeats at the hands of the Edomites and Philistines. (2 Chron. 28:17–18 records how these
two nations attacked Judah from the south and west soon after the northern coalition of Israel and
Damascus had inflicted serious reverses on the armies of Ahaz.) A serious difficulty with this
view, however, is derived from the fact that no such capture and despoilation of Jerusalem is
reported to have taken place during these campaigns as is implied in Obad. 11.
A good majority of the evangelical scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have
inclined toward a much earlier date, that of Jehoram ben Jehoshaphat, 848–841. This is the view
espoused by Delitzsch, Keil, Kleinert, Orelli, and Kirkpatrick. Second Kings 8:20 states
concerning Jehoram: “In his days Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah, and made a king
over themselves.” The succeeding verses speak of Jehoram’s unsuccessful campaign against
them in which he inflicted much damage but failed to subjugate them once again to Judah’s
suzerainty. Second Chronicles 21:16–17 adds these details: “And Yahweh stirred up against
Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines, and of the Arabians that are beside the Ethiopians: and they
came up against Judah, and brake into it, and carried away all the substance that was found in the
king’s house, and his sons also, and his wives; so that there was never a son left him, save
Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons” (ASV).1 Piecing these items of information together, we find
it quite probable that the Edomites cooperated with the Arabian-Philistine invasion as
subordinate allies, and shared in the booty of Jerusalem when that unhappy capital fell to their
combined efforts.
In this way we have a plausible historical setting for Obad. 11: “In the day that thou stoodest on
the other side, in the day that strangers carried away his substance, and foreigners entered into
his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them.” This verse implies that
the enemies of Judah forced their way into Jerusalem and plundered its treasures. As the city was
being looted, lots were cast by the cooperating marauders to decide which quarter of the town
would be granted to each contingent for the purposes of plunder. Such a description hardly fits in
with the complete and permanent destruction of the city such as was inflicted upon it by
Nebuchadnezzar in 587–586. Moreover, as correctly translated in the ASV, verse 13 looks
forward to other occasions when this same Jerusalem may again be attacked by invading foes:
“Enter not into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity .. neither lay ye hands on their
substance in the day of their calamity.” Such words would hardly be appropriate if Jerusalem
were already a desolate heap of ruins, as the 585 date would imply. Hence we must look for
some military action which involved the storming of Jerusalem but stopped short of its complete
destruction; an engagement, moreover, in which the Edomites might well have played a part (as
they probably did not do when the Chaldeans stormed the city in 587). The only recorded
episode which fits all these conditions seems to be this invasion in the reign of Jehoram.
The 585 date is also imperiled by the strong evidence that the prophet Jeremiah had read and
adapted for his own purposes Obad. 1–9 (see Jer. 49:7–22). Jeremiah’s passage is found as one
in a series of oracles based to a large extent on the prophecies of earlier messengers of God. (Cf.
Jer. 48 with Isa. 15–16, and Jer. 49 with Amos 1:13–15; 8:1–3.) Obadiah could hardly have
borrowed from Jeremiah, for he expresses his sentiments more briefly and rapidly than does
Jeremiah and in part also more heavily and abruptly. By smoothing down the rugged places in
Obadiah’s style of expression, Jeremiah shows himself to have been the adapter rather than the
original source, and as adapter he has made the whole oracle more lucid and perspicuous.
The later date theory is largely based upon Obad. 20, “And the captivity [gālût] of this host of
the children of Israel … shall possess that of the Canaanites.” Apart from the context this might
well refer to the deportation of the total population of Judah into Babylonian Exile, thus
substantiating a 585 date; but galot may also refer to the capture of single individuals or limited
groups of people. Thus Amos 1:9 refers to the guilt of the slave traders of Tyre who delivered
over an “entire captivity” (gālût shelē-mah) to the Edomites composed of kidnapped individuals
for use as slaves in the iron mines. In this case “entire captivity” cannot refer to the deportation
of the entire population but only to the inhabitants of isolated communities captured in a sudden
slave raid. This episode referred to by Amos must, of course, have happened in the eighth
century, long before the Babylonian captivity of 586 B.C. In Isa. 20:4 the same term is used of the
action of the king of Assyria in leading away Egyptian and Ethiopian prisoners after his
victorious campaign in the Nile valley—an incident which was to take place in the early seventh
century, in the reign of Essarhaddon. Thus we may conclude that an author who wrote Obad. 20
may have lived one or two centuries before the time of Nebuchadnezzar. The fulfillment of this
verse is of course another matter, for it cannot be dated any earlier than the Hasmonean dynasty
in the second century B.C., and very probably is to be sought for in the events of the last days of
the millennial kingdom.
There is one obscure reference in verse 20, to a distant locality called Sepharad, the identification
of which is much disputed. An old rabbinic tradition relates it to the region of Spain; hence the
Spanish Jews became known as the Sephardic communion. Other scholars relate it to the capital
of Sardis in Asia Minor and cite recently discovered inscriptions in Aramaic referring to that
district by the term S-p-r-d (these being the consonants of the name Sepharad). But since there
was no deportation or migration of the Jews to Sardis, so far as is known to us from ancient
documents, this is hardly a plausible identification.4 The most likely identification connects
Sepharad with a district referred to as Shaparda in Southwestern Media mentioned in an
inscription of King Sargon of Assyria. It is well known that Sargon deported some of the ten
tribes to the “cities of the Medes” (see 2 Kings 18:11). Therefore this locality would have been
very appropriate to mention in Obadiah’s prediction.
As already mentioned, some critics divide Obadiah into two sources. Lanchester dates section A,
verses 1–7, 10–14, soon after 586 B.C. and places section B, verses 8, 9, 15–21, some time during
the exile or even later. R. H. Pfeiffer uses a different division: he makes section A include verses
1–14, 15b, and dates its composition about 460 B.C. (just prior to the time of Ezra). His section
B, comprising 15a, 16–21, comes from a later period which he does not more closely define.
Eissfeldt divides the chapter about the same way as Pfeiffer, but he dates section A as possibly
earlier, perhaps soon after 587 B.C. It may seem surprising that so short a work should be
parceled out to different authors by these source critics, but their methodology is essentially the
same as that employed in the dissection of the larger books of the Old Testament. The effort is
made on the basis of a very imperfect knowledge of ancient affairs to link up even the vaguest of
references to contemporary affairs with the known historical conditions in each succeeding
period, and to operate upon the principle that there is no genuine predictive prophecy but only
prophecy after the event. In other words, so-called predictive prophecy is only a reflection of
what has already happened.
As for Obadiah’s message of the judgment of God which is to come upon Edom, it should be
remembered that the Edomites were regarded by the prophets as typical of the malignant foes of
Israel who hated and opposed all that Israel stood for in their witness to the one true God. Thus,
Edom became typical of the corrupt, hate-ridden world, ripe for apocalyptic judgment (cf. Isa.
34). But the prediction is made here that despite Edom’s opposition, a future day is coming when
Israel shall once more be put in sure possession of the promised land, including the surrounding
territories of Mount Seir, Philistia, Gilead, and even Phoenicia as far as Zarephath. This future
Israelite realm shall belong to Yahweh.
As to the fulfillment of this doom upon Edom, it may be fairly inferred from Mal. 1:3–5 that by
Malachi’s time (ca. 435 B.C.) the Edomites had already been driven from Sela and Mount Seir by
the overwhelming forces of the Nabatean Arabs. Secular sources inform us that as early as the
reign of Darius I (522–485), the Nabateans had pushed the Edomites out of their ancestral
territory and driven them into the deserted regions of southern Judea. The Nabateans originally
came from Nabaioth in the region of Kedar in northern Arabia. Seventh-century Assyrian
inscriptions refer to them as the Nabaitai. In the course of time the power of this Nabatean
kingdom extended up into the Transjordanian region as far as Damascus. By New Testament
times Damascus was held for a while at least by King Aretas of the Nabatean dynasty (cf. 2 Cor.
11:32). As for the dispossessed Edomites, the region in which they settled came to be known as
Idumea, where they maintained an independent existence for a time, until they were conquered
by the Jewish king, John Hyrcanus (135–105 B.C.), and forcibly converted to the Jewish faith. In
the following century, the dynasty of Herod the Great, descended from the Idumean stock, came
into control of the kingdom of Judea.
 Joel

The name Joel means “Yahweh is God” (Yô˒ēl, Hebrew). The theme of this prophet was a
solemn warning of divine judgment to be visited upon Israel in the day of Yahweh. This day of
judgment is typified by the devastating locust plague which inflicts staggering economic loss
upon the nation. But this plague in turn points forward to a time of final destruction to be meted
out to all the forces of unbelief.

Outline of Joel

I. Plague of locusts as a type of the day of Yahweh, 1:1–2:11

A. Tremendous devastation by the locust horde, 1:1–7
B. This invasion a prefiguration of the human invaders of the future (Assyrians and
Chaldeans), 1:8–20
C. Day of Yahweh as a day of reckoning, 2:1–11
II. Call to repentance, 2:12–19
A. External forms of contrition as well as sincere heart repentance, 2:12–15
B. Repentance on a nationwide scale, including all classes and ages, 2:16–17
C. Promise of the returning mercy of the Lord (apparently fulfilled in the reign of Joash),
2:18–19
III. Promise of showers of blessing, 2:20–32
A. Terrible overthrow of Israel’s invaders from the north, 2:20
1. Sennacherib
2. The world power of the last days
B. Rain from the Lord after locust plague and drought, 2:21–27
C. This rain a prefiguration of outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days (beginning at
Pentecost), 2:28–32; meteoric signs the final phase of the last days (cf. Matt. 24:29)
IV. Final triumph of God in the day of Yahweh, 3:1–21
A. Final slaughter of unbelievers; divine judgment upon the final dictator, 3:1–16
1. Foreshadowing judgment upon Phoenicia and Philistia, now oppressing Judah, 3:1–13
2. Foreshadowing triumphs of the Maccabean age, 3:14–16
B. Millennial triumph and peace for Jerusalem, including the whole family of the redeemed,
3:17–21

Joel: Time of Composition

The prophecy of Joel has been dated all the way from the ninth century to the fourth century B.C.
by the various schools of criticism, conservative and liberal. But on the basis of internal
evidence, the most reasonable estimate is in the minority of King Joash (835–796 B.C.), during
the regency of Jehoida, the high priest, about 830 B.C. For an excellent presentation of the
arguments for an early date, see A. E Kirkpatrick, The Doctrine of the Prophets (1890). These
evidences may be listed under three categories:
1. The type of government implied by these prophetic utterances best accords with a regency.
There is no mention of a king; the elders and priests seem to bear the responsibility of national
leadership. This would seem to imply that the king was a minor and that regents ruled in his
place. According to 2 Kings 11:4, Joash was crowned at the age of seven, and his uncle,
Jehoiada, is said to have exercised a controlling influence in Judah even to the day of his death,
in the latter part of Joash’s reign.
2. There is distinct evidence of borrowing, as between Amos and Joel. For example, both Joel
3:18 and Amos 9:13 contain the promise, “The mountains shall drop sweet wine.” While Joel
might possibly have quoted from Amos, the contextual indications are that it was the other way
around. Another example is found in Joel 3:16 where in the midst of a prophetic discourse he
says, “The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem.” This same verse
appears at the beginning of the prophecy of Amos, and it may fairly be inferred that Amos was
using it as a sort of sermon text from which he developed his first message. On this basis, then,
Joel must have been written earlier than Amos, that is, earlier than 755 B.C.
3. An even more conclusive argument is found in the array of enemies which are mentioned by
the author as threatening Judah. There is no reference to the Assyrians or Chaldeans (to say
nothing of the Persians), but the foes of Judah are stated to be the Phoenicians, the Philistines,
the Egyptians, and the Edomites (cf Joel 3:4, 19). This points to a period when Assyria and
Babylon posed no threat, but Egypt and the surrounding neighbors of Israel were still strong and
aggressive. Even in the time of Joash, the power of Egypt was still to be feared; in Rehoboam’s
time Shishak (identified with Sheshonkh I, 947–925 B.C.) had ravaged the kingdom and sacked
the temple at Jerusalem; and in the reign of Asa occurred the dread invasion of Zerah, the general
sent by Osorkon I (925–829) of the Ethiopian dynasty (New Bible Dictionary, p. 1359). In the
time of Joash’s grandfather, Jehoram, and even under Jehoshaphat, the Edomites and Philistines
made incursions against Judah which were so successful that they even took the city of
Jerusalem by storm (cf. 2 Kings 8:20–22; 2 Chron. 21:16–17). At no time after the reign of Joash
was the kingdom of Judah faced by this particular assortment of enemies. It should be added that
at no time after the Chaldean period could Egypt have been regarded as an aggressive power, for
it had all it could do to maintain its own independence. This would seem to eliminate the
possibility of a date in the Persian or Greek period.
Among non-Conservative critics of more recent times, there is a tendency to date the prophecy of
Joel just after the death of Josiah in 609 B.C. This is the position of A. S. Kapelrud (Joel Studies,
1948), who argues that the author was a contemporary of Jeremiah and Zephaniah and composed
the entire book more or less as it stands. Usually, however, the critics place Joel after the Exile,
in view of his foreknowledge of the Babylonian captivity (2:32–3:1), but more especially
because of the mention of the Greeks (Yāvānɩ̂ m) in 3:6. They proceed on the assumption that
Greeks could not have been mentioned until after the time of the Alexandrian conquest in 330
B.C. But it should be noted that in this context the Greeks are mentioned as a very distant people,
and the enormity of the guilt of the Phoenician slave traders is brought out by the fact that they
had no scruples about selling Israelite captives even to regions so remote as those inhabited by
the Greeks. It cannot be supposed that the Hellenic peoples were unknown to Israel in the pre-
exilic period, since they are found mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as early as the eighth
century B.C. Such a reference is quite incompatible with a situation where the Greeks have
already made themselves the masters of the whole Persian empire, for at that later period they
could not be considered remote from Palestine, as the text clearly implies. (Partly for this reason
Pfeiffer prefers to date Joel around 350 B.C., in the time of Alexander’s father, Philip of
Macedon.)
These critics also advance the argument that Joel fails to mention the Northern Kingdom or the
rule of any king of Judah or even the idolatrous high places (bāmôt). And yet it should be
pointed out that none of these things are mentioned in Nahum or Zephaniah either, although both
of them are admitted by the critics to date from the seventh century, prior to the Babylonian
Exile. As Young points out (IOT, p. 249), there was no particular occasion in Joel to mention the
Northern Kingdom by name, for these prophetic discourses were directed only against Judah. It
should be added that Joel occasionally employs the name Israel (cf. 2:27; 3:2, 16) in such a way
that it cannot be demonstrated conclusively whether it refers to the entire twelve tribes or only to
the Northern Kingdom; therefore it is by no means certain that he ignored the latter completely.
The critics have also pointed to verses like 1:9, 1:13; and 2:14 as indicating the practice of
presenting a continual burnt offering before the Lord in the temple (the so-called tāmɩ̂ d). They
argue that since there is no mention of the t̄amɩ̂ d in the Torah until the P document was added in
post-exilic times, Joel must likewise have been post-exilic. But of course this line of reasoning
can carry no weight with those who have not already subscribed to the ill-founded Documentary
Theory.
Although many critics regard Joel as a single literary unit, there are others like Oesterley and
Robinson who hold to a theory of dual authorship. Quite considerable portions of Joel which can
be regarded as apocalyptic, they have assigned to 200 B.C. on the ground of its alleged
resemblance to inter-testamental apocalyptic productions. Hence they interpret the phrase in 3:6,
“the sons of the Grecians” (ASV), to refer to the Seleucid dynasty of Antiochus Epiphanes. Such
radical interpretations as these are the outgrowth of an evolutionistic theory, rather than a
legitimate deduction from the text itself. According to this view, it was only at a late stage in the
history of Israel’s religion that the genre of apocalyptic came into vogue. (By the term
apocalyptic is meant that type of prophetic revelation which envisions the miraculous
intervention of God in future history to deliver His people from all their foes and to make them
supreme in the earth.) The evolutionary view regards this genre as a product of the despair which
gripped the Jewish people after they had failed to achieve political greatness or independence by
their own efforts. Not until after the disappointments of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. could
the Jews have fallen into such a mood of despair, and turned so exclusively to God as their last
and only hope of achieving a national destiny. But here again the force of the argument depends
upon evolutionistic and antisupematural assumptions. Extensive radical surgery would be needed
to excise all such passages from the pre-exilic prophets. Moreover, it should be observed that by
no stretch of the imagination can the Hebrew style of Joel’s prophecy be regarded as belonging
to the Persian or Greek period. Its purity of diction and its grammatical constructions point rather
to an early pre-exilic date of composition.
To sum up, then, the internal evidence agrees more closely with the period of 835 B.C. for the
composition of this prophecy than with any other. The lack of reference to any reigning king on
the throne of Judah, the implication that the responsibility of government rests upon the priests
and elders, the allusion to the neighboring nations as the current foes of Judah (rather than
Assyria, Babylonia, of Persia)—all these factors point quite conclusively to the period of Joash’s
minority. The linguistic evidence perfectly accords with this early date and makes a theory of
post-exilic composition quite untenable. It is fair to say that the arguments for a late date are
largely based upon humanistic philosophical assumptions rather than upon reasonable deduction
from the data of the text itself.

Jonah

The name Jonah (Yōnōh) means “dove.” This prophet is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 as having
predicted the wide extent of the conquests of Jeroboam II (793–753)a prediction most congenial
to such an earnest patriot as he. His native town was Gath-hepher in the tribe of Zebulon in
northern Israel. His prophetic ministry would seem to have begun shortly before the reign of
Jeroboam, or at least before that brilliant king had attained his more outstanding military
triumphs. The theme of this prophecy (which is really a biography rather than a sermonic
discourse) is that God’s mercy and compassion extend even to the heathen nations on condition
of their repentance. It is therefore Israel’s obligation to bear witness to them of the true faith; and
a neglect of this task may bring the nation, like Jonah himself, to the deep waters of affliction
and chastisement. From the prophetic standpoint, Jonah’s experience of the living entombment
for three days in the belly of the whale serves as a type of the burial and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus (Matt. 12:40). (Incidentally, it should be observed that the Hebrew text of Jonah 2:1
actually reads dāg gādōl, or “great fish,” rather than a technical term for “whale.” But since
Hebrew possessed no special word for “whale,” and since no true fish—as opposed to a marine
mammal—is known to possess a stomach as capacious as a whale’s, it is reasonable to adhere to
the traditional interpretation at this point. The only other available term, tannɩ̂ n, was too vague to
be very serviceable here, since it could also mean shark, sea serpent, or even dragon.)

Outline of Jonah

I. God’s commission to Jonah rejected, 1:1–3

II. Jonah’s flight and Yahweh’s pursuit, 1:4–17

III. Jonah’s prayer for deliverance, 2:1–10

IV. God’s commission renewed and discharged at Nineveh, 3:1–9

V. Jonah’s grief at Nineveh’s repentance and Yahweh’s reply, 3:10–4:11

Jonah: Time of Composition

The text does not specify the author of this biographical account, but it is fair to assume that it
was composed by Jonah himself at the latter end of his career as he looked back on the decisive
turning point in his ministry. This would account for the use of the past tense ‫( הֳיְ תָ ה‬hāyeṯâ) in
referring to Nineveh (3:3), for over a period of decades it might be expected that conditions
would have changed in that city since the time of Jonah’s visit. This would put the time of
composition somewhere in the neighborhood of 760 B.C. Although the author does not speak of
himself in the first person, this is no more surprising than the fact that Moses in the Torah always
referred to himself in the third person, even as was the case Xenophon in his Anabasis and Julius
Caesar in his Gallic Wars.
Liberal critics date the composition of Jonah about 430 B.C. on the supposition that it was
composed as an allegory of a piece of quasi-historical fiction to oppose the “narrow nationalism”
of Jewish leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah, at a time when the Samaritans were being excluded
from all participation in the worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem, and all the foreign wives were
being divorced under the pressure of bigoted exclusivism. It was most timely for some
anonymous advocate of a more universalistic ideal to produce a tract for the times that would call
the nation back to a more liberal viewpoint. Thus the chief ground for the 430 date is a theory of
the sequence of the development of ideas in the history of Israel’s religion.
Following through with this concept of Jonah, its allegory is interpreted as follows: Jonah
himself represents disobedient Israel; the sea represents the Gentiles; the whale stands for the
Babylon of the Chaldean period; and the three days of Jonah’s confinement in the whale’s belly
points to the Babylonian captivity. Just as Jonah was commanded to be true to his evangelistic
responsibility to the heathen, so also it was the will of God in fifth-century Judah for the Jews to
rise to their opportunities of witness to the one true faith and cast aside the hampering limitations
of hidebound exclusivism. As for the miraculous gourd whose sudden demise so grieved Jonah’s
heart, this has been interpreted by some to refer to Zerubbabel.
A closer examination of the text, however, shows that numerous features of the narrative can
scarcely be fitted into the allegorical pattern. If the whale represented Babylon, what did Nineveh
represent? As for the ship that set sail from Joppa, it is hard to see what this would correspond to
in the allegory; nor is it clear why three days should be selected to represent seventy years of
captivity. Furthermore, there is not the slightest historical evidence to show the existence of any
such universalistic sentiment among the fifth-century Jews, as this theory predicates. While there
were undoubtedly some Jews who believed in maintaining harmonious relations with pagan
neighbors, their motives seemed to have been materialistic and commercial rather than
missionary in character. For critics to point to the books of Jonah and Ruth as testimonies to this
zeal is simply a bit of circular reasoning: these two books must have been written at this period
because they fit in with the supposed stage attained by Jewish thought as attested by these two
books.

Jonah: Historical Objections to Authenticity

In support of this theory of the quasi-historical character of Jonah, there are at least four main
objections which are directed against the credibility of the biblical narrative as it stands. Each of
these is now discussed and its weaknesses pointed out.
1. It is said to be hardly conceivable that a king of Assyria would have been referred to merely as
the “king of Nineveh” by a Hebrew author who lived back in the Assyrian period. Only a writer
who lived at a much later age, long after Assyria had passed away, would have employed such
terminology. But this explanation for Jonah’s use of the title king of Nineveh can scarcely be
regarded as satisfactory. No ancient author who ever referred to Nineveh in any of the records
preserved to us (whether in Akkadian, Hebrew, Greek, or Latin) seems to have been unaware
that Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. It is therefore naive to suppose that a writer
living in 430 B.C. imagined that the king of Nineveh was not also the king of Assyria. Certainly
the Greek authors, like Herodotus of the fifth century and Xenophon of the fourth century, were
well aware of the Assyrian empire and Herodotus at least of Nineveh as its capital. We must
therefore look to some other explanation for this designation “the king of Nineveh” in the third
chapter of Jonah. Well-established Hebrew usage in the historical books of the Old Testament
provides good analogies for this title. For example, although Ahab was stated to be the king of
Israel (i.e., of the entire Northern Kingdom), he is occasionally referred to as the “king of
Samaria” (1 Kings 21:1), inasmuch as Samaria was the capital of the realm. Similarly also,
Benhadad, who was well known to the chronicler as the king of Syria (Aram), is occasionally
referred to as the “king of Damascus” (2 Chron. 24:23). Here again it was the capital city of the
kingdom which was employed in this royal title. Jonah’s use of the term king of Nineveh
furnishes a perfect parallel to these examples.
2. It is also urged that Nineveh is spoken of in the past tense “was” (hāyetâ) in 3:3. This could
only mean that the city had long since ceased to exist; otherwise the author would have said,
“And Nineveh was being [tihyeh] a great city.” It is readily conceded that the author might well
have expressed the size of Nineveh by use of the imperfect tense (tihyeh) had he chosen to do so;
but it was evidently his particular purpose at that point in the narrative to stress the fact that
Nineveh had already become a very sizable city (though it had probably become even larger by
the time the book was written, i.e., in 760 B.C.). The only way to express this thought, “had
become,” was by the use of the perfect tense, hāyetâ.
3. The enormous size attributed to Nineveh is obviously a fabulous element in the narrative. The
author states it required three days to walk through the city because of the vastness of its
dimensions (3:3–4). Yet it should be noted that the text does not actually say that Jonah needed
three days to walk through Nineveh without stopping. it only states that he took three days to go
through it on his preaching mission. Street corner preaching requires a fairly extended stop at
each place the message is delivered. Three days was certainly not too long a period to complete
this assignment in a city which may well have contained as many as 600,000 inhabitants (judging
from the 120,000 infants suggested by Jonah 4:11) in the eighth century. To this should be added
the population of the suburbs, which would naturally have been quite considerable. The whole
administrative district of Nineveh was thirty to sixty miles in diameter. From the context it is
only fair to assume that the phrase “a walk of one day” (mahalaḵ yôm ˒eḥāḏ) referred to that
section of the metropolis which he was able to cover as he paused to preach at many different
vantage points where he could catch the attention of the people. For a point of comparison, it was
a three day journey for a hiker to travel from Dan to Shiloh, which equated to 60 miles.
4. It is declared to be quite inconceivable that any heathen city such as Nineveh would have
repented so quickly and so generally in response to the exhortation of an unknown foreigner
from a small and distant country. The king’s decree that all the inhabitants should clothe
themselves in sackcloth and even drape their animals in the symbols of mourning, is nothing
short of absurd. These too must be regarded as fabulous elements. Well, it must be admitted that
such a ready response from a pagan populace was nothing short of miraculous, but the narrative
makes it plain that the will and power of God Almighty were behind the whole enterprise. There
would have been little point to God’s insistence that Jonah go to Nineveh unless He Himself was
prepared to make the prophet’s preaching effectual. Who can define valid limits to the power of
the Holy Spirit in bringing men under conviction when His truth is preached? If the Ninevites
became apprehensive of a general destruction which would engulf the whole city, including the
livestock as well as the human inhabitants, what could have been more appropriate from their
standpoint than to clothe the very beasts with such symbols of contrition?
Apart from such theoretical considerations, moreover, there are also historical evidences that at
one or two strategic periods during Jonah’s ministry he would have found a congenial
atmosphere for a monotheistic message. In all probability the king of Nineveh and Assyria at this
time was Adad-Nirari III (810–783 B.C.). It is well known that this king confined his worship to
the god Nebo, and thus advanced more definitely in the direction of monolatry than any other
occupant of the Assyrian throne. Second, Steinmueller (CSS, 2:289) suggests that if Jonah came
to Nineveh somewhat later, in the reign of Assurdan III (771–754), he would have found the
populace psychologically prepared to expect a total catastrophe, for a serious plague had befallen
the city in 765 and a total eclipse of the sun had taken place on June 15, 763. Another plague had
followed in 759.

LINGUISTIC ARGUMENTS
Those who espouse a post-exilic date for Jonah customarily appeal to an assortment of alleged
Aramaisms which occur here and there in the text.
1. In 1:5 occurs the word Sephɩ̂ nâ, “ship,” as a variant of a common Hebrew word, ˒oniyyâ,
which also means ship. Sephɩ̂ nâ is common in Aramaic; it occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible.
Nevertheless it is obviously derived from the root sāphan, “to cover,” which often occurs in the
Old Testament as well as in the Phoenician inscriptions (although this verb never occurs in
extant Aramaic). We may conclude that this expression originally signified a covered ship or a
boat equipped with a deck, and may well have been borrowed by Aramaic speakers from
Canaanite.
2. In Jonah 1:6 occurs the verb ˒ašat (in the hithpael stem) meaning “to remember.” In Aramaic
this verb occurs as early as the Elephantine Papyri. A related noun ˒ēšet appears in Song of Sol.
5:14 with the meaning “artifact”; ašôt (or else it is to be pointed as singular, ˒aštût) occurs in Job
12:5 as “thought, opinion.” However, the verb does not occur either in Syriac or in Aramaic in
the sense in which it is used in Jonah, that is, “to remember.”

(I) = Israel (J) = Judah

THE WORLD OF THE PROPHETS

The Prophet Date of Contemporar Audience World Power Contemporar

Ministry y Prophets y Kings
Isaiah 740–680 Hosea, Judah Assyria (J) Uzziah,
Amos, (Tiglath-Pileser Jotham, Ahaz,
Micah III, Hezekiah,
Sargon II, Manasseh
Sennacherib, (I) Pekahiah,
Esarhaddon) Pekah,
Hoshea

Jeremiah 626–580(?) Habakkuk, Judah Assyria (J) Josiah,

Daniel, (Sinsharishkun, Jehoahaz,
Ezekiel Ashurbanipal, Jehoiakim,
Ashuraballit II) Jehoiachin,
Babylonia Zedekiah
(Nabopolassar,
Nebuchadnezza
r)

Ezekiel 592–570 Daniel, Judah Babylonia (J) Zedekiah,

Jeremiah (Nebuchadnezz Gedaliah—
ar) governors

Daniel 605–530 Jeremiah, Judah Babylonia (J) Jehoiakim,

Ezekiel, (Nebuchadnezz Jhoiachin,
Habakkuk a, Zerubbabel,
Nabonidus, Zedekiah,
Belshazzar) Gedaliah—
Medo-Persia governors
(Cyrus,
Darius I)

Hosea 756–725 Amos, Israel Assyria (I) Jeroboam II,

Isaiah, (Tiglath-Pileser Zechariah,
Micah III, Shallum,
Shalmaneser V) Manahem,
Pekahiah,
Pekah, Hoshea
(J) Uzziah,
Jotham,
Ahaz, Hezekiah

Joel 830–810 Elisha Judah Assyria (Adad- (J) Joash

Nirari III, (I) Jehu,
Shalmaneser Jehoahaz
III)
Amos ca. 760–757 Hosea Israel Assyria (J) Uzziah
(Ashurdan III, (I) Jeroboam II
Ashur-Nirari V)

Obadiah 848 Elijah Judah Assyria (J) Jehoram,

(Shalmaneser Ahaziah
III) (I) Jehoram,
Jehu

Jonah ca. 800 None Nineveh Assyria (Abad- (J) Joash (I)
Nirari III) Jehoahaz

Micah 735–690 Isaiah, Judah Assyria (J) Ahaz,

Hosea Israel (Tiglath-Pileser Jotham,
III, Hezekiah
Shalmaneser V, (I) Pekah,
Sragon II, Hoshea
Sennacherib)

Nahum ca. 640 Zephaniah Judah Assyria (J) Amon,

(Ashurbanipal) Josiah

Habakkuk 608–597 Jeremiah Judah Babylonia (J) Jehoahaz,

(Nabopolassar, Jehoiakim,
Nebuchadnezza Jehoiachin,
r) Zedekiah

Zephaniah 640–630 Nahum, Judah Assyria (J) Amon,

Jeremiah (Ashurbanipal) Josiah

Haggai 520 Zechariah Judah Medo-Persia Zerubbabel—

(Darius I) governor of
Judah

Zechariah 520–475 Haggai, Judah Medo-Persia Zerubbabel—

Esther (Darius I, governor of
Xerxes) Judah

Malachi ca. 435 Nehemiah Judah Medo-Persia Nehemiah—

(Artaxerxes I) governor of
Judah
3. The relative pronoun šê (“who, which”) appears in its simple form in Jonah 4:10, then appears
in two compounds, beshellêmɩ̂ in 1:7 (“on account of whom?”) and in bešellɩ̄ (“on account of
me”) in 1:12. Strictly speaking, however, this can hardly be called an Aramaism, since šê is not
an Aramaic word at all; and yet in later Hebrew it came to be used very much like an Aramaic
particle di. Yet so far as this writer is aware, the particle di never occurs in pre-Christian
Aramaic after the preposition be to mean “on account of.” On the other hand, šê occurs as early
as the time of the Judges in the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:7), which interestingly enough was
composed by a native of northern Galilee (just as Jonah was). It should be noted also that šê
quite often occurs in the Phoenician inscriptions (alongside the more frequent ˒-š) and there is a
good possibility that the sailors who manned Jonah’s ship were of Phoenician origin; hence there
is every likelihood that this particle would have occurred in their conversation.
There are various other alleged Aramaisms which rest on even more tenuous foundations. For
example, the verb hēṭɩ̂ l, to throw (Jonah 1:5, 12), occurs in Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and cannot therefore be regarded as a proof of late authorship. As for
qerɩ̂ ˒ah (“preaching”), this noun is formed on a root which is as indigenous to Hebrew as it is to
Aramaic, even though the noun itself happens to occur only here in the Hebrew Bible. One other
word calls for special comment: ṭa˒am, meaning “edict, decree.” While it is a common Hebrew
word with the meaning “taste” or “understanding,” it occurs only here in the governmental sense
(Jonah 3:7). However, it is obviously related to the Assyrian word ṭēmu, which bears the same
meaning, and Jonah’s use of it may therefore have been a reminiscence of the actual wording of
the Assyrian decree of the king of Nineveh. (It is so used in Ezra 6:14, an Aramaic passage,
quoting a decree of the king of Persia.)
In view of the vigorous objections of rationalists to the historicity of Jonah, it is appropriate at
this point to refer to the statements of the Lord Jesus as recorded in the gospels. In Matt. 12:40–
41 Christ refers to two events which are most forthrightly rejected as fabulous by modern
criticism: Jonah’s preservation in the belly of the whale, and the effectiveness of his preaching in
bringing the Ninevites to repentance. In Matt. 12:40 Christ says: “For as Jonah was three days
and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth.” If the story of Jonah had been merely fictional, then Christ’s own burial
from Good Friday to Easter morning would have to be only fictional; otherwise there would be
no basis for the comparison (“as-so”). This is especially true where a type and an antitype are
involved. Every other instance where an Old Testament typical event is referred to in Scripture
(e.g., John 3:14; 1 Cor. 10:1–11), a historical episode is involved. There is no objective evidence
whatsoever that Jesus of Nazareth regarded this experience of Jonah’s as nonhistorical.
Next we read in Matt. 12:41: “The men of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this
generation, and shall condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a
greater than Jonah is here.” Nothing could be clearer than the fact that Christ is here reproaching
His own contemporaries for their unbelief on the ground that they failed to measure up even to
the standard of Bibleless pagans in ancient Nineveh. But if those Ninevites in point of fact never
did repent at the preaching of Jonah, then Christ’s statement here is untrue and His reproach
quite unfounded. Inasmuch as even Conservative scholars like James Orr have conceded the
nonhistorical character of Jonah, it is important to come to terms with these clear statements by
the Lord Jesus and to realize that one cannot reject the historicity of Jonah without also rejecting
the authority of Christ.
 COMPARISON OF JONAH AND PSALMS

Jonah Palms

2:3a 69:14

2:3b 42:7

2:4b 18:6

2:5 69:1–2

2:6 42:7–8

2:7 5:7

Jonah: Integrity of the Text

Liberal scholars regard the book of Jonah as a composite from various sources. In particular, the
psalm of thanksgiving (Jonah 2:2–9) is regarded as an alien insertion (1) because 2:1 tells us
Jonah prayed (hitpallēl), whereas the rest of the composition contains thanksgiving rather than
petition; (2) because the thanksgiving was expressed before Jonah had been ejected on dry land
and had reason to express gratitude to God. But these objections, as formulated by Wellhausen
(Die kleinen Propheten, 1898, p. 221), miss the point of this psalm altogether. In the first place,
as is readily apparent from numerous examples in the book of Psalms, praise was regarded by the
Hebrews as a very legitimate and important part of prayer. Thus this same verb (hitpallēl) occurs
with its cognate noun for “prayer” (tepillâ) in 2 Sam. 7:27, a passage containing adoration and
praise to Yahweh as a prayer-answering God. Second, as Young has well pointed out (IOT, p.
257), 2:2–9 does not express thanksgiving for deliverance from the belly of the whale but rather
deliverance from drowning, through the agency of the whale. When construed in this way, as it
obviously should be, there is no discrepancy at all between Jonah’s psalm and the setting in
which it is placed by the author. Wilhelm Moeller (GATE, pp. 240–41) calls attention to the fact
that there are noteworthy resemblances between this psalm of Jonah and those of David.
Proceeding on rationalistic grounds, Eissfeldt regarded Jonah as a complex of two legends, one
of which (chaps. 1–3) treats Jonah’s disobedience to God’s command, and the other (chap. 4)
records Jonah’s controversy with God over the application of His grace to the heathen. From the
fact that the tale of the fish swallowing a man and spewing him out again is found in other
literature, he drew the conclusion that the incident was only legendary and therefore could not
have happened. (However Eissfeldt is mistaken in this claim, as footnote 12 demonstrates.)
In reply to this it needs only to be pointed out that no one has ever yet demonstrated that all
incidents recorded in legends are incapable of occurrence in actual fact. Fundamentally, of
course, Eissfeldt’s objection is based upon the premise of the impossibility of miracles.
Deductions drawn from this a priori cannot be regarded as any more trustworthy than the a
priori itself. But on the grounds of unbiased literary criticism, no convincing case can be made
out for multiple sources underlying the book of Jonah.

22
Amos, Hosea, and Micah
IN THE SECOND HALF of the eighth century B.C., Hebrew prophecy attained its golden age of
excellence. After the earliest of the writing prophets, Obadiah, Joel, and Jonah, had done their
work, the stage was set for the appearance of the four great figures who dominated the scene
from 755 to the opening of the seventh century: Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. The first three
of these are discussed in this chapter; for the work of Isaiah, two additional chapters will be
necessary.

Amos

The meaning of the name Amos is probably “burden-bearer” (derived from the verb ˒āmas, “to
lift a burden, carry”). The central theme of his prophecy was Yawheh’s faithfulness to His
covenant and to His holy law, and the strict accountability of His people Israel to a practical
observance of their covenant obligations. Amos earnestly stressed their duty of cordial
compliance with the legal code of the Torah, both in letter and in spirit. Israel’s failure to present
to the Lord a true and living faith and their attempt to foist upon Him the wretched substitute of
mere empty profession could lead only to the utter ruin and destruction of the nation.

Outline of Amos

I. Yahweh’s judgment upon the nations, 1:1–2:16

A. Prelude: the day of wrath at hand, 1:1–2
B. Judgment of God upon the heathen neighbors for their various crimes of inhumanity (all
of these are to suffer fire and destruction), 1:3–2:3
1. Damascus, 1:3–5
2. Gaza, 1:6–8
 3. Tyre, 1:9–10
4. Edom, 1:11–12
5. Ammon, 1:13–15
6. Moab, 2:1–3
C. Wrath upon both the covenant nations for neglecting God’s Word, 2:4–16
1. Judah, having turned from God to false teachers, likewise to suffer fire and destruction
2:4–5
2. Israel also to suffer overpowering destruction for sins of exploiting the poor, and
tolerating of incest, showing thanklessness toward God, and persecuting the faithful
2:6–16
II. Offenses of Israel and warnings of God, 3:1–6:14
A. Judgment unavoidable because of Israel’s complete depravity, 3:1–15
1. The greater the privilege, the greater the accountability, 3:1–3
2. Amos’ credentials as God’s messenger, 3:4–8
3. Israel’s crimes of oppressing the poor, their luxuries and self-indulgence to be
punished by devastation and depopulation, 3:9–15
B. God’s challenge to the stiff-necked pleasure seekers, 4:1–13
1. Their pursuit after pleasure and wealth and their carnal forms of worship to seal their
doom, 4:1–5
2. The unheeded warning of the plagues; judgment will surely come upon them, 4:6–13
C. Lamentation and final appeal, 5:1–27
D. The doom of exile for the pleasure-seeking upper classes, 6:1–14
III. Five visions of Israel’s fate, 7:1–9:10
A. Locusts—restrained, 7:1–3
B. Fire—restrained, 7:4–6
C. Plumbline—all to be leveled flat, 7:7–9 (Interlude: the clash with Amaziah; his doom
foretold, 7:10–17)
D. Late summer fruit—the end at hand, 8:1–14
E. The smitten temple (of Bethel); Israel to be treated like heathen, 9:1–10
IV. Promises of restoration, 9:11–15
A. Preliminary: the New Testament age, 9:11–12
B. The millennial consummation, 9:13–15

Amos: The Author

Since the name of his father is not given, it may be assumed that Amos was of humble birth. His
native town was Tekoa, situated five miles southeast of Bethlehem in the Judean highlands. By
profession Amos was both a herdsman and a cultivator of sycamore figs. He may possibly have
tended cattle (as is implied by the term bōqēr, “herdsman,” in 7:14). Certainly he raised sheep,
for he speaks of himself as a nōqēd (cf. in 1:1), that is, a shepherd of a small, speckled variety of
sheep called nāqōd. He also made his living by cultivating sycamore or wild fig trees (šɩ̄q˒emɩ̂ m,
7:14), a tree which exuded a ball of sap, which if nipped at the right season, hardened into a sort
of edible fruit which the lower classes were able to afford.
Apparently he was an earnest student of the books of Moses, for his style shows strong
Pentateuchal influences. Yet as a farmhand he hardly enjoyed the advantages of a formal
education in a “school of the prophets” (such as maintained by Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha), nor
was he ever officially anointed for his prophetic ministry. At the call of God he left his home in
Judea as a mere layman to proclaim a hostile message in the proud capital of the Northern
Kingdom of Israel, without any ecclesiastical authorization. Without any status as a recognized
prophet, he nevertheless braved the prejudice of the Ephraimite public to carry out faithfully his
commission from God. A man of rugged convictions and iron will, he could not be deflected
from his purpose even by the highest functionary of the Samaritan hierarchy.

Amos: Date of Composition

There is general agreement among Old Testament scholars that Amos’ ministry is to be dated
between 760 and 757 B.C., toward the latter part of the reign of Jeroboam II (793–753). This king
had enjoyed a brilliant career from the standpoint of military success, for he had accomplished
the feat of restoring the boundaries of the Northern Kingdom to the limits with which it had
begun in 931 B.C. The result had been a considerable influx of wealth from the booty of war and
advantageous trade relations with Damascus and the other principalities to the north and
northeast. But along with the increase in wealth, no share of which was granted to the lower
classes, there had come a more conspicuous materialism and greed on the part of the rich
nobility. They shamelessly victimized the poor and cynically disregarded the rights of those who
were socially beneath them. A general disregard for the sanctions of the Seventh Commandment
had undermined the sanctity of the family and had rendered offensive their hypocritical attempt
to appease God by observance of religious forms.
The text of Amos gives a precise date for his preaching mission to Bethel: “two years before the
earthquake” (1:1), that is, the severe earthquake in the reign of Uzziah, which was remembered
for centuries afterward (cf. Zech. 14:5, “As ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of
Uzziah, king of Judah”). Unfortunately the time of this earthquake cannot be more precisely
determined, but at all events it served as a preliminary sign from God. The warnings of doom
which Amos conveyed were to be of sure fulfillment. The statement in 1:1 also served to indicate
that the book of Amos was not published until at least two years after he had orally delivered his
message.

Amos: Integrity of the Text

Liberal critics concede the authenticity of nearly all the text of Amos, whom they regard as “the
first of the writing prophets” (for according to the dating of Wellhausen and Driver, Amos would
constitute the earliest written portion of the Old Testament, with the single exception of
document J). There are, however, fifteen verses which have been classified as later insertions.
These include 1:9–12 with its stylized formulae of denunciation (“For three transgressions [the
name of the city], and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof … but I will send a
fire upon [the city], which shall devour the palaces thereof”). For the same reason 2:4–5 is
rejected. Expressions of thanksgiving and praise to God, such as 4:13; 5:8–9; 9:5–6, are regarded
as foreign to Amos because of their cheerful tone. And the Messianic promise of 9:11–15 is said
to represent a type of thinking much later than the eighth century B.C. Oesterley and Robinson
interpret 9:11–12 as presupposing the Exile, because of reference to the fall of the “tabernacle of
David,” interpreted to mean the fall of Jerusalem (IBOT, p. 366). But even Bentzen rejects this
inference as ill-founded, pointing out that Amos may have regarded the house of David as fallen
“because it had lost the position which it had occupied in David’s own time.” R. H. Pfeiffer
regards the historical Amos as capable of only a pessimistic emphasis upon denunciation for sin
and quite incapable of the hopeful view toward the future; any passages which disturb this
portrait must be explained as later additions (cf. IOT, pp. 583–84). It will be readily seen that all
these passages have been objected to from the ground of a special theory of the historical
development of Israel’s thought, rather than on the basis of the data of the text itself.

Amos: Points of Contact with the Pentateuch

Since Documentarian Critics regard Amos as the earliest of the writing prophets, it is appropriate
to point out that there are numerous references even in Amos to the legal provisions of the Torah
(including D and P). Observe the cumulative force of the examples which follow.
1. Amos 2:7, “A man and his father go in unto the same maid,” is apparently a reference to
religious prostitution, which was expressly forbidden in Deut. 23:17–18. Amos’ audience could
hardly have been expected to know that this practice was a crime unless there had been prior
laws which condemned it. It is a fair inference that these laws must have been composed long
enough before Amos’ time to acquire the weight of a sanction from antiquity.
2. Amos 2:8 condemns the keeping overnight of “garments taken in pledge” (a practice
forbidden in Ex. 22:26), an offense which is compounded when the creditor even sleeps on the
pawned article overnight (cf. Deut. 24:12–13).
3. Amos 2:12 refers to the consecration of the Nazarites, the sanction for which is found only in
Num. 6:1–21 (a P passage according to Driver, ILOT, p. 55).
4. Amos 4:4 (ASV) mentions tithing “after three years,” a specification largely unknown to the
pagans, and ordained in the Old Testament only in Deuteronomy 14:28 and 26:12, which state
that the tithe of the farmer’s produce is to be laid up in store for the Lord.
5. Amos 4:5 (ASV), “Offer a sacrifice … of that which is leavened,” implies that this practice
was forbidden by law-a prohibition contained in Lev. 2:11 and 7:13 (which are, of course, P
passages).

AMOS REFLECTS THE TORAH

EXAMPLE AMOS TORAH

Religious prostitution 2:7 Deut. 23:17–18
forbidden

Condemns overnight pledges 2:8 Ex. 22:26

Consecration of Nazarites 2:12 Num. 6:1–21

Tithing 4:4 Deut. 14:28; 26:12

Unleavened sacrifice 4:5 Lev. 2:11; 7:13

Early sacrificial terms:

freewill offering 4:5 Lev. 7:16–18; 22:18;

Num. 15:3; Deut. 12:6–7

solemn assembly 5:21 Lev. 23:36; Num. 29:35

burnt offering, etc. 5:22 Lev. 7:11–14; 8:1–32

6. Amos 5:23 implies that the ritual of sacrifice in Amos’ day was accompanied by song, an
ordinance attributed in the historical books to King David. It is fair to assume that if P had been
composed subsequent to the time of Amos, it would have contained some reference to musical
accompaniment in the sacrificial ritual in order to invest this practice with Mosaic sanction. But
actually there is no reference to music or song as an accompaniment of sacrifice anywhere in the
entire Pentateuch.
7. Several terms for sacrifice alleged by many critics to be post-exilic are mentioned quite
casually and freely by Amos as if they were commonly practiced in his own time. These include
(a) the freewill offering (nedābah) in Amos 4:5 (cf. Lev. 7:16–18; 22:18; Num. 15:3; Deut. 12:6–
7, etc.); (b) “the solemn assembly” (aṣārah) in Amos 5:21 (cf Lev. 23:36; Num. 29:35); (c)
“burnt offering,” “meal offering,” and “peace offering” all occur in a single clause in Amos 5:22;
they are so mentioned in combination and also separately in numerous passages of the Torah (cf.
Lev. 7:11–14; 8:1–32).
The only way to evade the impact of this evidence is to label them as insertions by later
redactors—a question-begging procedure resorted to by Pfeiffer, Eissfeldt, and others. But any
fair handling of the evidence clearly indicates that there was by Amos’ day a body of law
understood to be ancient and authoritative and labeled by Amos himself as “the Torah of
Yahweh” (Amos 2:4). This Torah was evidently accepted by all concerned as an established fact
in Amos’ time. There is no hint or suggestion of any kind that Amos was pioneering with any
new monotheistic message or an enlightened moral code which had not previously been
acknowledged as binding. The cumulative impact of this evidence is quite conclusive in favor of
a priority of the Torah to Amos.

Hosea

The name of this prophet, Hôšēa˒, means “salvation”, and is in reality identical with the name of
the last king of the Northern Kingdom, Hoshea. For purposes of distinction, however, the
English Bible always spells the name of the minor prophet as Hosea (without the second h).
The theme of this book is an earnest testimony against the Northern Kingdom because of its
apostasy from the covenant and its widespread corruption in public and private morals. The
purpose of the author is to convince his fellow countrymen that they need to repent and return in
contrition to their patient and ever-loving God. Both threat and promise are presented from the
standpoint of Yahweh’s love to Israel as His own dear children and as His covenant wife.

Outline of Hosea

I. Training of the prophet, 1:1–3:5

A. His homelife symbolic of the nation’s punishment and restoration, 1:1–2:1
1. The marriage with Gomer, a potential adulteress, 1:2
2. The children: Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah, Lo-Ammi, 1:3–9
3. The final triumph of grace, 1:10–2:1
B. His domestic tragedy, a revelation of God’s redeeming love, 2:2–23
C. His dealing with Gomer, a command and a revelation, 3:1–5
II. Teaching of the prophet, 4:1–14:9
A. National pollution and its cause, 4:1–6:3
1. The findings of the Judge and the pronouncement of sentence, 4:1–19
2. Warning to priest, people, and king: the snare of the idolatrous shrines, 5:1–15
3. Exhortation to repent, 6:1–3
B. National pollution and its punishment, 6:4–10:15
1. Statement of God’s case against Israel, 6:4–7:16
a) Fickleness, bloodguiltiness: the bloody harvest, 6:4–11
b) Mercy prevented by persistent rebellion, adultery, winebibbing, 7:1–16
2. Judgment pronounced, 8:1–9:17
a) Reaping the whirlwind, devoured by the world they doted on, 8:1–14
b) Bondage in exile, the withering away of Israel, 9:1–17
3. Recapitulation and appeal: the empty vine, 10:1–15
C. The love of Jehovah, 11:1–14:9
1. His inalienable love in dealing with wayward Israel, 11:1–11
 2. Exile: God’s only alternative because of stubborn rebelliousness, 11:12–12:14
3. Guiding principles and eventual outcome of exile, 13:1–16
4. Final appeal to repent; promise of ultimate blessing, 14:1–9

Hosea: Authorship and Integrity of the Text

The prophet Hosea was apparently a citizen of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, for he refers to
the ruler in Samaria as “our king” (7:5). Judah is mentioned only incidentally, whereas the
interest is centered on the ten tribes. The author’s diction betrays traces of dialect not found in
Judah but suggestive of North Israel near the Aramaic-speaking territory of Syria. Hosea’s
family was of sufficient social standing for his father’s name (Beeri) to be mentioned. We have
no other biographical details apart from those which he supplies in his own prophecies.
The Liberal critics attribute substantially all this prophecy to the historic Hosea. The only
passages that have been challenged as later insertions are those which refer to Judah (so Marti
and Nowack); or those sections, like 11:8–11 and 14:2–9 (so Volz and Marti), which predict
future blessing or national deliverance. Eissfeldt and Bentzen, however, do not feel disposed to
rule out categorically every mention of salvation after punishment, nor even every mention of
Judah. Since even in the undoubtedly genuine portions of the book, such as chapters 1–3, the
possibility is held out of future deliverance of the nation, those few verses which they label as
glosses are denied to Hosea on other grounds. As for the mention of Judah, Young rightly points
out (IOT, p. 244) that the prophet regards the government of the Northern Kingdom as a
usurpation, implying that only the Davidic dynasty is legitimate.

Hosea: Time of Composition

Not all the prophecies in this book seem to have been delivered at the same period in the
prophet’s career. A portion of these must have been given before the death of Jeroboam II (753
B.C.), since chapter 1 interprets the symbolic meaning of Jezreel to signify that the dynasty of
Jehu is to be violently ended. This was fulfilled in 752 when Shallum assassinated Zachariah, the
son of Jeroboam. On the other hand, chapter 5 seems to have been directed against King
Menahem (752–742). Chapter 7 must be dated a decade or two later; it denounces the
government’s policy of double-dealing whereby Egypt is pitted against Assyria, and this policy
is not known to have been followed by Israel prior to the reign of Hoshea (732–723 B.C.).
Therefore we are justified in regarding the book as combining excerpts from sermons delivered
over a period of at least twenty-five years. Possibly the final compilation was published in 725
B.C., perhaps thirty years after Hosea’s preaching ministry had begun.

Problem of Gomer
Much discussion has been devoted to the difficulty created by God’s command to marry an
adulterous woman. Would Jehovah have commanded a holy man to do that which was expressly
forbidden to the priests and frowned upon for Israel as a whole? In an effort to relieve the moral
problem, some conservatives, such as E. J. Young, have suggested that this experience was not
real, but only a sort of extended parable. In the interests of this theory, some scholars have even
suggested that the name Gomer means “completion,” that is, completion of sin; the name of her
mother, Diblaim, would then mean “raisin cakes,” an idolatrous type of sacrificial offering (cf.
3:1).
The identification of Gomer has been a debated point from the earliest times. Even the ancient
commentators in the early Christian period differed as to whether Gomer was really a woman
whom Hosea married, or whether she was simply a parable to illustrate the alienation between
disobedient Israel and her faithful God. It was argued that this could hardly have been a factual
account, since it would be a disgrace for a man of Hosea’s priestly and prophetic stature to marry
a woman who was of ill repute. For that reason, Jerome and Calvin, from the time of the
Reformation, felt that this narrative was to be understood allegorically. Even Hengstenberg,
Havernick, Keil, Eichhorn, Rosenmuller and Hitzig favored a parabolic interpretation.
On the other hand, Theodore of Mopsuestia in the older period adhered to the literal
interpretation that she was a woman whom Hosea actually married (whether she was immoral
previous to the marriage or became so afterward). This is also the view of Franz Delitzsch,
Kurtz, Hoffman, Wellhausen, Cheyne, Robertson Smith and George Adams Smith.
In our own century we still have the conflicting interpretations. E. J. Young of Westminster
Seminary tended to adhere to the same allegorical view as Calvin rather than an actual
biographical episode. Leon Wood felt that it would be doing violence to the credibility of
Scripture elsewhere to render it parabolic, in light of the explicit statement in the first chapter of
Hosea, which contains the explicit order or encouragement by God to marry this woman. Clearly
God’s purpose was to teach Hosea what it meant to have an unfaithful wife, even as Yahweh
himself had to deal with an unfaithful nation in the case of Israel. Leon Wood in EBC, vol. 7, p.
164, stated, “ ‘A woman of adulterous character’ is really what is implied by the Hebrew phrase
‘a wife of harlotry.’ ” He did not call Gomer an actual zōnâ (which would indicate an already
practising prostitute; but rather the “wife of harlotry” is to be understood as proleptic (p. 166).
Wood disagreed with Keil in regard to Gomer’s status at the time of marriage to Hosea. He
rightly points out that this would hardly conform to the analogy of Israel because back in the
time of Moses and Joshua the Hebrew race stood in a meaningful covenant relationship with
God. Yet it should be recognized that Ex. 32 and Num. 14 show a strong trend towards spiritual
infidelity.
William Rainey Harper pointed out that Gomer’s first child, Jezreel, was clearly said to have
been fathered by Hosea himself, whereas the birth notices for Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi have
no such affirmation, and therfore may have been fathered adulterously. Even Otto Eissfeldt
expressed the view that the marriage was literally carried out to serve as an experience through
which Hosea went in order understand more fully what God’s pain was like in regard to the
apostasy of the Northern Kingdom (cf. Pfeiffer’s The Old Testament, an Introduction [New
York: Harper, 1965], p. 390). This agrees with the traditional literalistic view. Interestingly
enough, Robert Pfeiffer himself did not feel that the woman in chapter 3 was the same woman as
Gomer in Chapter 1, affirming that chapter 3 had nothing to do with Hosea’s personal life, but
was a mere symbolic analogy that never actually took place (Introduction to the Old Testament
[New York: Harper, 1941], p. 569). Wellhausen felt that Hosea became aware of Gomer’s
unfaithfulness only after the birth of their first child, who was legitimate. Gomer may have been
drawn towards an adulterous relationship with some other lover and later went astray after the
birth of Jezreel.
LaSor, Hubbard, and Bush in Old Testament Survey do not suggest that the marriage of Hosea
and Gomer was anything other than an actual occurrence. They espouse the view that Gomer was
overtly wicked when she married Hosea (p. 336). There is no real evidence that Hosea (or the
Israelites in general) countenanced sexual experience with a stranger prior to marriage. We may
conclude therefore that Gomer was not already a prostitute or an adulteress when Hosea married
her, because Jezreel was clearly begotten by Hosea (1:3). But, the second and the third children
seem to have been fathered out of wedlock.
One very strong objection to a mere figurative type of interpretation is found in the fact that the
story of Hosea’s marriage is given as a straightforward narrative. There is no evidence in the text
itself that it was to be understood as a parable or a purely fictional experience described in order
to illustrate a theological teaching. If the transaction did not really take place, even though it is
set forth in such a factual manner, then the possibility opens up of questioning the historicity of
any number of other episodes which are narrated in Scripture as if they were sober history. A
basic hermeneutical principle involved here is that the statements of Scripture are to be
interpreted in their plain and obvious sense, unless other Scripture bearing upon the same subject
shows that these statements are to be interpreted in some other fashion.
The better solution to this problem is to be found in the supposition that at the time Hosea
married Gomer, she was not a woman of overtly loose morals. If Hosea delivered his message in
later years, he may well have looked back upon his own domestic tragedy and seen in it the
guiding hand of God. Hence the Lord’s encouragement to him to marry her in the first place,
though her future infidelity was foreknown to God, would have been tantamount to a command:
“Go, marry an adulterous woman,” even if the command did not come to the prophet in precisely
these words.

Micah

The name Micah is a shortened form of Mɩ̄-kā-Yāhū, which means “Who is like Jehovah?” The
basic theme of his message is that the necessary product of saving faith is social reform and
practical holiness based upon the righteousness and sovereignty of God. Because of the general
lack of such saving faith, both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms are destined to experience
God’s wrath. Yet after the punishment is over, the nation will be restored and the Messiah will
eventually come.

Outline of Micah

I. Sentence of God upon both idolatrous kingdoms, 1:1–16

A. God to crush Israel’s pride because of broken law, 1:1–4
 B. Punishment for idolatry: destruction of Samaria, 1:5–7
C. Lament over the coming (Assyrian) invasion; its progress, city by city, 1:8–16
II. Bill of particulars: oppression by upper classes, 2:1–3:12
A. Exploitation of the defenseless lower class as by the idle rich, 2:1–13
B. The government a devourer instead of a defender of its citizens, 3:1–4
C. Contrast between the corrupt state religion and the power and the message of God-fearing
preachers, 3:5–8
D. The utter destruction to be meted out on these three evil groups, 3:9–12
III. Ultimate triumph of God’s grace, 4:1–5:15
A. Messianic triumph of the kingdom of God over the.world, 4:1–8
B. Necessary conditions to be first fulfilled: suffering, exile, restoration, judgment upon
heathen neighbors, 4:9–13
C. The divine-human Victor who shall bring this to pass, defending His flock, destroying the
world powers, 5:1–6
D. Triumph of Israel after humbling and purging from idolatry, 5:7–15
IV. God’s controversy with unfaithful Israel, 6:1–16
A. Summons to the Northern Kingdom to respond to God in view of His exodus mercies,
6:1–5
B. Response of an awakened conscience: holy living must accompany valid worship; yet
Israel is still dishonest and oppressive, 6:6–13
C. Failure to repent will be followed by a crop failure; the “clever” policy of alliance with
unbelievers is to be discredited, 6:14–16
V. Fulfillment of covenant promise to the faithful remnant, 7:1–20
A. Lament of true Israel over prevalence of barbarous selfishness and shameful corruption in
their own land, 7:1–6
B. True Israel’s continued trust in God’s mercy, 7:7–10
C. Christ’s triumph through the church age and the millennium, 7:11–20

Authorship of Micah

Micah was a citizen of the Southern Kingdom, having been born at Moresheth near Gath, about
twenty miles west of Jerusalem. His father’s name is not given, and we may conclude that his
family was of humble origin. It is significant that his preaching ministry was especially
preoccupied with the sufferings of the common people and of the peasants in the agricultural
areas who were exploited by rich and unscrupulous, landed nobility. Micah seems to have spent
much of his lifetime in the provincial areas rather than at the capital city of Jerusalem. Hence he
was not in as close touch with international politics as was his contemporary, Isaiah. Yet he did
devote at least one chapter (chap. 6) to the declining career of the Northern Kingdom.

Micah: Date of Composition

Micah’s ministry was contemporary with the earlier career of Isaiah, that is, during the reigns of
Ahaz and Hezekiah. Interestingly enough, the books of these prophets contain one passage in
common (Mic. 4:1–3 and Isa. 2:2–4), an oracle relating to the Millennial Kingdom. Since Israel
is addressed in Micah 6 as if it were still capable of escaping divine judgment through a last-
minute repentance, it may be fairly deduced that Micah commenced his ministry at least before
the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C.. The conditions of corruption and immorality in Judah as Micah
depicts them correspond well with what is known of the reign of Ahaz (742–728), or else
possibly of the earliest years of Hezekiah’s reign as co-regent with Ahaz (728–725). Actually
Micah’s career must have begun even earlier than Ahaz’ reign, for 1:1 speaks of his prophesying
in the reign of Jotham (751–736). As to the question of when his preaching ministry ceased,
there is no certain evidence. From Jer. 26:18–19, we learn that his earnest warnings during the
reign of Hezekiah were taken seriously, and made an important contribution to the revival which
took place under government sponsorship.

Micah: Integrity of the Text

Some critics have challenged the authenticity of certain portions of chapters 6 and 7 on the
ground that they contain thoughts and motifs which occur elsewhere only in passages from a
later period of Israel’s history. For example, they prophesy the regathering of God’s dispersed
people after a term of exile, and foretell the destruction of Israel’s foes on a catastrophic scale, to
be followed by the ultimate triumph of Israel over the heathen under the lordship of the Messiah.
Heinrich Ewald assigned chapters 6 and 7 to an unknown author living in the reign of Manasseh
(697–642). Julius Wellhausen even regarded 7:7–20 as exilic in origin and contemporary with
Deutero-Isaiah; yet some of his more moderate successors like Driver (ILOT, pp. 308–13)
question the necessity of so late a date being assigned to it. But all antisupernaturalists unite in
denying the genuineness of 4:10: “Thou shalt come even unto Babylon: there shalt thou be
rescued; there will Jehovah redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies” (ASV). Such
predictions as these are impossible except upon the basis of supernatural revelation. Hence no
eighth-century author could have written this verse; it requires a foresight which is more than
human. Therefore this verse is denied to Micah on the grounds of antisupernatural bias, just as
Isa. 40–66 is denied to an eighth-century author, as we shall presently see.

23
Isaiah
THE HEBREW NAME of this prophet is Yeša˓-Yāhû, meaning “Yahweh is salvation.”
Appropriately enough, the basic theme of Isaiah’s message is that salvation is bestowed only by
grace, by the power of God, the Redeemer, rather than by the strength of man or the good works
of the flesh. The holy God will not permit unholiness in His covenant people, and will therefore
deal with them in such a way as to chasten and purge them and make them fit to participate in
His program of redemption. Isaiah sets forth the doctrine of Christ in such full detail that he has
rightly been described as “the evangelical prophet.” Deeper Christological insights are to be
found in his work than anywhere else in the Old Testament.

Outline of Isaiah

I. Volume of rebuke and promise, 1:1–6:3

A. First sermon: rebellion confronted with judgment and grace, 1:1–31
B. Second sermon: present chastisement for future glory, 2:1–4:6
C. Third sermon: judgment and exile for the stubborn nation, 5:1–30
D. Fourth sermon: the prophet cleansed and commissioned by God, 6:1–13
II. Volume of Immanuel, 7:1–12:6
A. First sermon: rejection of Immanuel by worldly wisdom, 7:1–25
B. Second sermon: speedy deliverance foreshadowing the coming Deliverer, 8:1–9:7
C. Third sermon: inexorable doom of exile for proud Samaria, 9:8–10:4
D. Fourth sermon: the future downfall of the false empire (Assyria); the glorious empire to
come, 10:5–12:6
III. God’s judgment—burdens upon the nations, 13:1–23:18
A. Babylon, 13:1–14:27
B. Philistia, 14:28–32
C. Moab, 15:1–16:14
D. Damascus and Samaria, 17:1–14
E. Ethiopia, 18:1–7
F. Egypt, 19:1–20:6
G. Babylon, second burden, 21:1–10
H. Edom, 21:11–12
I. Arabia, 21:13–17
J. Jerusalem, 22:1–25
K. Tyre, 23:1–18
IV. First volume of general judgment and promise, 24:1–27:13
A. First sermon: universal judgment for universal sin, 24:1–23
B. Second sermon: praise to the Lord as Deliverer, Victor, and Comforter, 25:1–12
C. Third sermon: a song of rejoicing in Judah’s consolation, 26:1–21
D. Fourth sermon: punishment for oppressors and preservation in store for God’s people,
27:1–13
V. Volume of woes upon the unbelievers of Israel, 28:1–33:24
A. First sermon: God’s dealings with drunkards and scoffers in Israel, 28:1–29
B. Second sermon: judgment upon blind souls who try to deceive God, 29:1–24
C. Third sermon: confidence in man versus confidence in God, 30:1–33
D. Fourth sermon: deliverance through God’s gracious intervention, 31:1–32:20
E. Fifth sermon: punishment of treacherous deceivers and the triumph of Christ, 33:1–24
VI. Second volume of general judgment and promise, 34:1–35:10
A. First sermon: destruction of the Gentile world power, 34:1–17
B. Second sermon: the ultimate bliss of God’s redeemed on the highway of holiness, 35:10
VII. Volume of Hezekiah, 36:1–39:8
A. Destruction of Judah by Assyria averted, 36:1–37:38
B. Destruction of Judah’s king averted, 38:1–22
C. Judgment upon the king’s pride in his earthly treasures; Babylonian captivity predicted,
39:1–8
VIII. Volume of comfort, 40:1–66:24
A. Purpose of peace, 40:1–48:22
1. Majesty of Jehovah the Comforter and Sovereign Deliverer of Israel, 40:1–31
2. Challenge of the God of providence to worldly minded unbelievers, 41:1–29
3. Servant of Jehovah, individual and national, 42:1–25
4. Redemption by grace, 43:1–44:5 (deliverance through Cyrus)
5. Dead idols or the living God? (44:6–23)
6. The sovereign God employing Cyrus as deliverer and the ultimate conversion of
converting the heathen, 44:24–45:25
7. Lessons to be learned from Babylon’s downfall and Israel’s preservation, 46:1–47:15
8. Judgment upon faithless, hypocritical Israel, 48:1–22
B. Prince of peace, 49:1–57:21
1. Messiah to bring restoration to Israel and light to Gentiles, 49:1–26
2. Sinfulness of Israel contrasted with the obedience of the Servant, 50:1–11
3. Encouragement to trust in God alone, not fearing men, 51:1–16
4. Summons to Israel to awake and return to God’s favor, 51:17–52:12
5. Divine Servant to triumph through vicarious suffering, 52:13–53:12
6. Consequent blessing to Israel and the Church, 54:1–17
7. Grace for all sinners who trust in Christ, 55:1–13
8. Inclusion of Gentiles in the blessing of Israel, 56:1–8
9. Condemnation of the wicked rulers of Israel, 56:9–57:21
C. Program of peace, 58:1–66:24
1. Contrast between false and true worship, 58:1–14
2. Confession of Israel’s depravity, leading to deliverance by God’s intervention, 59:1–21
3. Glorious prosperity and peace of the redeemed, 60:1–22
4. The Spirit-filled Christ by whom the kingdom comes, 61:1–11
5. Zion to be restored and glorified, 62:1–63:6
6. God’s former mercies to cause Israel to plead for deliverance, 63:7–64:12
7. God’s mercy for spiritual Israel alone, 65:1–25
8. Externalism in worship to be replaced by heart sincerity, 66:1–24

It is important to note in regard to the last section, the Volume of Comfort, that the twenty-seven
chapters, 40 through 66, show a remarkable symmetry in the three subdivisions. The end of
subdivision A, “The purpose of peace,” is virtually identical with the end of subdivision B, “The
Prince of Peace”; that is to say, they both conclude with the formula, “There is no peace, saith
my God, to the wicked.” Each of the three subdivisions sets forth in a systematic way an area of
doctrinal emphasis—theology, soteriology, and eschatology. This architectonic structure points
to a single author rather than to a collection of heterogeneous sources. What is said about the
volume of comfort as to its systematic arrangement may be extended to the first thirty-nine
chapters as well, for even the outline as here given indicates a deliberate use of balance or
parallelism in structure.

Authorship of Isaiah

The prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz (˒āmōṣ—“strong or courageous”), was apparently a
member of a fairly distinguished and influential family. Not only is his father’s name given, but
he appears to have been on familiar terms with the royal court even in the reign of Ahaz. He
must have been a well-educated student of international affairs, who spent most of his time in the
city of Jerusalem, where he was in touch with the crosscurrents of national and foreign affairs.
Directed by God to oppose with vigor any entangling alliances with foreign powers (whether
with Assyria as against Samaria and Damascus, or with Egypt as against Assyria), his cause was
foredoomed to failure, for both government and people chose to put their trust in political
alliances rather than in the promises of God.
Until the death of Hezekiah (in 697 or 698), Isaiah enjoyed a large measure of respect despite the
unpopularity of his political views, and in the period of religious reform carried through by
Hezekiah, his influence upon religion was most significant. Yet as God warned him in the temple
vision (Isa. 6:9–10), the nation by and large turned a deaf ear even to his spiritual message. Apart
from a small minority of earnest believers, his ministry to his contemporaries was little short of a
failure. In the reign of Manasseh, the degenerate son of Hezekiah, a strong tide of reaction set in
against the strict Jehovah-worship of the previous reign. Isaiah lived to see the undoing of all his
own work so far as contemporary politics were concerned. In spiritual matters, his countrymen
fell into an even more desperate condition of depravity than they had in the reign of Ahaz.
Recognizing the inevitability of God’s judgment upon the unrepentant nation, Isaiah’s interest
during the reign of Manasseh came to be focused increasingly upon the coming overthrow of
Jerusalem, the Babylonian Captivity, and the restoration which lay beyond. An old tradition
relates that he was martyred at some time in the reign of Manasseh, possibly by being sawed in
two inside a hollow log (cf. Heb. 11:37). Since he records the death of Sennacherib in Isa.
37:37–38, it is fair to assume that Isaiah lived until after Sennacherib’s death in 681 B.C.

Critical Theories of the Composition of Isaiah

With the growth of deism in the western world during the late eighteenth century, it was only
natural that men of antisupematural convictions would take exception to those extensive portions
of Isaiah which exhibit a foreknowledge of future events. If the book was to be treated as of
merely human origin, it was an unavoidable necessity to explain these apparently successful
predictions as having been written after the fulfillment had taken place, or at least when it was
about to occur. We may distinguish four stages in the history of Isaianic criticism.
1. Johann C. Doederlein (1745–1792), professor of theology at Jena, was the first scholar to
publish (in 1789) a systematic argument for a sixth-century date for the composition of Isaiah
40–66. He reasoned that since an eighth-century Isaiah could not have foreseen the fall of
Jerusalem (in 587) and the seventy years of captivity, he could never have penned the words of
comfort to exiled Judah which appear in chapter 40 onward. Furthermore, from the rationalistic
standpoint it was obviously impossible for anyone back in 700 B.C. to foresee the rise of Cyrus
the Great, who captured Babylon in 539 and gave permission to the Jewish exiles to return to
their homeland. But not only was his work foreseen, Cyrus was even referred to by name in two
texts: Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1. Obviously, therefore, the author of these prophecies must have been
some unknown Jew living in Babylon sometime between the first rise of Cyrus as an
international figure (around 550 B.C.) and the fall of Babylon to his expanding empire. This
spurious author living in Babylon around 540 came to be known to the critics as “Deutero-
Isaiah.”
These arguments proved so persuasive that the other Old Testament scholars like Professor
Eichhorn embraced the same view and expressed their agreement. In 1819, Heinrich E W.
Gesenius (1786–1842) published a commentary, Jesaja, Zweiter Theil. A professor of theology
at Halle and an eminent Hebrew lexicographer of rationalistic convictions, he made out a very
able argument for the unity of the authorship of the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah and
refuted the attacks of those who had already attempted to separate even Deutero-Isaiah into
several different sources, arguing that all the main themes throughout these chapters were treated
from a unified standpoint and employed language exhibiting striking affinities in vocabulary and
style from chapter 40 to 66. He insisted that they all came from the pen of a single author who
lived sometime around 540 B.C.
2. Inasmuch as conservative scholars had objected to the exilic date assigned to Isaiah II on the
ground that even in Isaiah I impressive evidences could be found of a foreknowledge of the
future importance of Babylon in Israel’s history, it became necessary to take a second look at the
first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah. Ernst E K. Rosenmueller (1768–1835), professor of Arabic at
Leipzig, took the next logical step in elaborating the implications of Doederlein’s position. If an
eighth-century author could not have written the passages in 40–66 which betray a
foreknowledge of Babylon’s significance, then those extensive sections in Isaiah I (such as
chaps. 13 and 14) which show a similar foreknowledge must likewise be denied to the historical
Isaiah and assigned to the unknown exilic prophet. The removal of such Babylonian sections
logically led to the questioning of Isaianic authorship of other passages too, even those in which
divine prediction was not a factor. In the process of time, the genuinely eighth-century portions
of Isaiah came to be whittled down to a few hundred verses.
3. In the course of this debate it became increasingly apparent that numerous passages in so-
called Deutero-Isaiah could hardly be reconciled with a theory of composition in Babylonia. The
references to geography, flora, and fauna found in Deutero-Isaiah were far more appropriate to
an author living in Syria or Palestine. Arguing from this evidence, Professor Bernard Duhm
(1847–1928) of Gottingen came out with a theory of three Isaiahs, none of whom lived in
Babylonia. According to his analysis, chapters 40–55 (Deutero-Isaiah) were written about 540
B.C., somewhere in the region of Lebanon, whether in Phoenicia or Syria was not clear. Chapters
56–66 (Trito-Isaiah) were composed in Jerusalem in the time of Ezra, around 450 B.C. Duhm
went on to show, however, that in all three Isaiahs there were insertions from still later periods in
Judah’s history, all the way down to the first century B.C., when the final redaction was worked
out. It was this school of criticism which George Adam Smith adhered to, for the most part, in
his homiletical commentary on Isaiah in The Expositor’s Bible. It hardly needs to be pointed out
that with the discovery of a second-century B.C. Hebrew manuscript of the complete Isaiah
(discovered in the First Qumran cave in 1948) Duhm’s theory of first-century insertions becomes
impossible to maintain.
Perhaps it should be added that this divisive criticism did not go unanswered, even in Germany,
during the nineteenth century. Among the more notable scholars who upheld the Isaianic
authorship of all sixty-six chapters were the following: (a) Carl Paul Caspari (1814–1892), a
convert from Judaism who became a professor at the University of Christiania in Norway. He
was a pupil of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (in Berlin); (b) Moritz Drechsler, likewise a pupil of
Hengstenberg, who published a commentary on Isa. 1–27, but died before completing the rest of
his work; (c) Heinrich A. Hahn (1821–1861), who published and supplemented Drechsler’s work
as far as Isaiah 39; (d) Franz Delitzsch (1813–1889), who ably maintained the genuineness of
Isaiah’s prophecies through all the editions of his celebrated commentary on Isaiah until the final
one (when he finally made room for an exilic Deutero-Isaiah); (e) Rudolf E. Stier (1800–1862)
was another able exponent of the Conservative position. In England, the same position was
maintained by Ebenezer Henderson, who taught at the Ministerial College, 1830–1850. In
America, Joseph Addison Alexander of Princeton Seminary published a very able commentary
in two volumes in which he thoroughly refuted the divisive theories of liberal German
scholarship.
4. In the twentieth century, the tendency of liberal scholarship has been to lower the date of the
non-Isaianic portions of Isaiah rather than to multiply the number of Isaiahs. Thus, Charles
Cutler Torrey of Yale argued for a single author for Isa. 34–66 (except 36–39), which were
composed by a writer who lived in Palestine, quite probably in Jerusalem itself, near the end of
the fifth century. This author, according to Torrey, did not address the exiles at all, but the people
to whom he spoke were in his own land of Palestine. The mention of Cyrus and the references to
Babylon and Chaldea are all mere interpolations which occurred only in five passages and may
therefore be disregarded.
Some more recent scholars, such as W. H. Brownlee, are coming to the view that the entire
Isaianic corpus of sixty-six chapters betrays such strong evidences of unity as to suggest an
orderly and systematic arrangement by one or more adherents of a so-called Isaianic School.
According to this position, a circle of disciples treasured a recollection of the eighth-century
prophet’s utterances and then gradually added to them with each successive generation until
finally an able practitioner of this school, living possibly in the third century, reworked the entire
body of material into a well-ordered literary masterpiece.

Isaiah: Critical Arguments for Source Division

Broadly speaking, the grounds adduced for disproving the Isaianic authorship of chapters 40–66
may be classified under three headings: differences in theme and subject matter, differences in
language and style, and differences in theological ideas. Each of these criteria is now to be
analyzed, with a view to its soundness and tenability.

ALLEGED DIFFERENCES IN THEME AND SUBJECT MATTER

Divisive critics argue that in Isaiah I (1–39) it is contemporary conditions which occupy the
center of the author’s attention. In Isaiah II (40–66) the center of interest is shifted to the
Babylonian Exile and the prospect of a return to the ancestral homeland. It is argued that a
futuristic viewpoint could not possibly have been maintained over such a large number of
chapters. This has proved to be a persuasive consideration even to those mediating scholars who
are not prepared to rule out the theoretical possibility of genuine prediction. By and large,
however, the principal architects of the Two-Isaiah theory have simply assumed on rationalistic
grounds the impossibility of divine revelation in genuinely predictive prophecy. From this
philosophical a priori viewpoint they have addressed themselves to the actual data of the text. As
J. A. Alexander pointed out in his Commentary, the basic assumption of all such critics, however
else they may differ among themselves, is that there cannot be such a thing as a distinct prophetic
insight of the distant future. He goes on to observe:
“He who rejects a given passage of Isaiah because it contains definite predictions of the future
too remote from the times in which he lived to be the object of ordinary human foresight, will of
course be led to justify this condemnation by specific proof drawn from the diction, style or
idiom of the passage, its historical or archaeological allusions, its rhetorical character, its moral
tone, or its religious spirit. On the discovery and presentation of such proofs, the previous
assumption, which he intended to sustain, cannot fail to have a warping influence.”
This comment contains a valid psychological insight which needs to be borne in mind in any
analysis of the structure of the higher critical assault on the genuineness of Isaiah. If there can be
no such thing as fulfilled prophecy, it becomes logically necessary to explain all apparent
fulfillments as mere vaticinia ex eventu, that is, prophecies after the event. The problem for the
antisupernaturalist becomes particularly acute in the case of the references to King Cyrus by
name (44:28; 45:1). It might be a plausible supposition that some keen political analyst living in
the early 540s could have made a successful prediction of the eventual success of the able young
king who had already made a name for himself in Media by 550 B.C. But it is quite another thing
for an author living in 700 B.C. to foresee events 150 years in advance of their occurrence.
It is usual in this connection to urge that the Scripture seldom predicts a future historical figure
by name. Yet it should be pointed out that where the occasion calls for it, the Bible does not
hesitate to specify the names of men and places even centuries in advance. For example, the
name of King Josiah was, according to 1 Kings 13:2, foretold by a prophet of Judah back in the
time of Jeroboam I (930–910), a full three centuries before he appeared in Bethel to destroy the
golden calf and idolatrous sanctuary which Jeroboam had erected. This of course may be
explained away as a late interpolation in 1 Kings; but there are other instances which cannot be
so neatly disposed of Thus Bethlehem is named by Micah (5:2) as the birthplace of the coming
Messiah, seven centuries before the birth of the Lord Jesus. This was a fact well known to the
Jewish scribes in the time of Herod the Great.
It is important to observe that the historical situation confronting Isaiah in 690 B.C. gave ample
warrant for so unusual a sign as the prediction of Cyrus by name 150 years in advance of the fall
of Babylon. Judah had sunk to such a low ebb in matters of religion and morals that the very
honor of God demanded a total destruction of the kingdom and a removal of the entire nation
into exile (just as had been foretold or forewarned in Lev. 26 and Deut. 28). If God was going to
vindicate His holy law, and honor His own promises of disciplinary chastisement, there was no
alternative but devastation and captivity. But once a people had been carried off into exile in a
distant land, there was virtually no hope that they would ever return to their ancestral soil. Such a
thing had never happened before in history, and humanly speaking, there was no prospect that
the dispersed Judah of a future generation would ever return to the land of promise. It was
therefore altogether appropriate for God to furnish a very definite token or sign to which exiled
believers might look as an indication of their coming deliverance and restoration to Palestine.
This sign was furnished in the specifying of the very name of their future deliverer.
Attempts have been made by C. C. Torrey and others to remove the two references to Cyrus as
later insertions which did not truly belong in the text. But the contextual evidence will not permit
any such deletion. O. T. Allis in The Unity of Isaiah (p. 79) points to the climactic and
parallelistic structure of 44:26–28, and shows that this would be quite destroyed or fatally
impaired if the name Koresh were removed. In this passage the greatest emphasis is laid on
God’s ability to foretell the future and to fulfill what He has predicted. The name is then
introduced to serve as objective confirmation of the divine authority underlying the entire
prophetic utterance.
Allis also points out that the references to Cyrus which begin at 41:2–5 reach a climax in 44:28,
and then taper off until the final reference (in which the Persian deliverer is alluded to although
not named) in 48:14. Counting all the allusions, there are repeated references to Cyrus through
these eight chapters; there is vivid description of his person and work, and his character is set
forth as two-sided. On the one hand he is represented as God’s “anointed shepherd,” and on the
other hand he is depicted as a pagan foreigner from “a far country” (46:11) who has not known
Jehovah (45:5). It goes without saying that all this would be quite pointless if at the time these
passages were composed Cyrus had already become a well-known figure who had made his
reputation as the consolidator of the Medo-Persian empire (as the 550–540 date would imply).
On the contrary, this future deliverer of captive Israel is always presented as a liberator who will
make his appearance in the distant future; and his appearance, in confirmation of this promise, is
to furnish an irrefutable demonstration of the divine authority of lsaiah’s message.
It should be pointed out that even in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, the greatest emphasis is laid
upon fulfilled prediction, and many future events are foretold. Some of these fulfillments took
place within a few years of the prediction; for instance, the deliverance of Jerusalem from the
power of Sennacherib by sudden supernatural means in 701 B.C. (37:33–35), the defeat of
Damascus within three years by the Assyrian emperor in 732 B.C. (8:4, 7), and the destruction of
Samaria within twelve years after Isaiah foretold it (7:16). Other events were not to take place
until long after Isaiah’s death; for instance, the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians
(13:17), and the eventual desolation of Babylon which should render it an uninhabited and
accursed site forever (13:19–20). Also, another long-range prediction was the coming of the
glorious Light in a future generation (9:1–2), which was to be fulfilled by the ministry of Christ
seven centuries later (cf Matt. 4:15–16).
As for a foreknowledge of the Babylonian Exile, it should be pointed out that even chapter 6,
which is acknowledged by all critics to be authentically Isaianic, points forward to the utter
depopulation and devastation of Judah which took place under Nebuchadnezzar. In verses 11 and
12 we read that God’s judgment is to be visited upon Judah “until cities be waste without
inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jehovah have
removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land” (ASV). The
following verse, when translated according to the indications of the context, clear contains a
clear reference to the restoration of the captivity from exile: “Yet in it shall be a tenth, and it
shall retum, and shall be eaten up.” Some interpreters have construed wašābâ (“will return”) as
having the force of the adverb again, but in this case such an interpretation is excluded by the
appearance of the name of Isaiah’s son three verses thereafter. It is obvious that Shear-jashub
(“A Remnant will Retum”) in 7:3, was a name bestowed upon this child as a token of Isaiah’s
faith that God would fulfill the promise of 6:13, that a remnant would return. To this should be
added the clear prediction made by Isaiah himself to Hezekiah (Isa. 39:5–7) after the latter’s ill-
considered display of all his treasure to the Babylonian envoys, that some day all of this wealth
would be carried off to Babylon, along with Hezekiah’s own descendants, who would have to
serve as slaves there. Since Babylon was only a subject province of the Assyrian empire at the
time of this prediction, the same accurate foreknowledge of future Chaldean supremacy must
have been revealed to the eighth-century Isaiah as appears in chapters 40–66.
In the latter part of Isaiah, as has already been suggested, the situation confronting Isaiah as a
prophet of Yahweh in the midst of the crass idolatry of Manasseh’s time demanded a response
from the Lord which would be appropriate to the challenge. If God should bring judgment upon
disobedient Judah, even to the point of total military defeat and a complete destruction of the
land, it might be possible for observers to interpret this as a mere stroke of misfortune such as
might happen to any people. Possibly it might even be construed as an expression of displeasure
on the part of the national God of Israel toward His unfaithful devotees, for even the pagan
religious thinkers were apt to explain national misfortune in this way. (Thus the Babylonian
Chronicle explains the subjugation of Babylon by Cyrus on the ground that Marduk was vexed at
her for some unspecified offenses. Likewise King Mesha of Moab explained the former
subjugation of Moab by Israel on the ground that Chemosh was angry with his own devotees.) A
decisive testimony to the righteousness and sovereignty of Jehovah as the one true God could be
made out only if His acts of punitive judgment and subsequent redemption were solemnly
announced by special revelation long before the occurrence of the fulfillment. Only thus could
the identity and authority of the Sovereign of the universe be clearly established before the eyes
of all mankind. (Cf. Isa. 48:5, where God states that He foretold what He would do, “lest thou
shouldst say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath
commanded them.”) So it was that the degenerate age of Manasseh, which threatened to
extinguish completely the testimony of Israel, presented a set of circumstances which altogether
demanded an extended series of predictive prophecies such as are contained in Isa. 40–66.
Quite clearly this is the intention of the author. In Isa. 41:26 we read: “Who hath declared it from
the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is right?” (ASV). (There
is an allusion here to previous predictions of Isaiah which had already been strikingly fulfilled.)
In 42:9, 23: “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare; before
they spring forth I tell you of them.” And again in 43:9, 12: “Who among them [i.e., the heathen
gods] can declare this, and show us former things?… I have declared, and I have saved, and I
have showed.” Likewise in 44:7–8: “Who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it? And the things
that are coming, and that shall come to pass, let them [the idols] declare.… Have I not declared
unto thee of old, and showed it? And ye are my witnesses.”
Such passages as these make it abundantly plain that the extensive and precise predictions of the
future contained in these chapters of Isaiah 11 were intended to achieve a very special purpose.
They were to furnish confirmation that the prophet’s message was in fact the message of the one
true God, who is absolute Sovereign over the affairs of men; that it was by His decree rather than
because of the might of Babylon that the covenant nation would be carried off into captivity.
Only through the powerful encouragement of fulfilled prediction would the future generation of
exiles summon up the courage to return to Palestine, even after the permission of the new Persian
government had been granted. In order to sustain the faith of Israel through all these
overwhelming reverses—the complete devastation of cities and familands, and the destruction of
the temple—it was necessary to furnish an absolutely decisive proof that these events had taken
place by the permission and plan of the God of Israel, rather than because He was a puny god
overcome by the more powerful deities of the Chaldean empire (a conclusion which all
heathendom would inevitably draw after the fall of Jerusalem).
It should also be pointed out that the Babylon-centered chapters (40–48) do not appear without
some advance preparation in the earlier part of Isaiah. As E. J. Young points out, chapters 1–39
constitute a “staircase, as it were, which gradually leads one from the Assyrian to the Chaldean
period. The two belong together, since the former is the preparation for the latter, and the latter is
the completion of the former.” That is to say, the atmosphere of Isaiah’s day was filled with the
threat of exile. Samaria had already been carried away captive by the Assyrians in 722;
Sennacherib made a supreme attempt to do the same to Jerusalem in 701. With deliberate
purpose, Isaiah placed chapters 38 and 39 (even though they narrated earlier events from about
712 B.C.) after chapters 36 and 37, which narrate episodes occurring in 701. (Note Isa. 38:5–6,
which quite clearly point forward to the future invasion of Sennacherib in 701.) This is because
chapters 38 and 39 lead up to the reason for the coming Babylonian Exile: the pride of Hezekiah
in displaying his wealth to the Babylonian envoys sent by Merodach-Baladan. Hence chapter 39
closes with an ominous prediction of the Chaldean captivity But even in the prior chapters there
are numerous intimations of the coming exile of the nation (cf. 3:24–26; 5:5–6; 6:11–13; 24:11–
12; 27:13; 32:13–18). Only by the question-begging device of labeling all such references as
later interpolations can one evade the impact of this considerable body of evidence that the
eighth-century Isaiah foreknew that the Exile was coming. Furthermore, there is the testimony of
2 Chron. 36:23 and Ezra 1:2 that Cyrus’s decree of release for the Jewish exiles at Babylon
included an affirmation that Yahweh had “charged” him to “build him an house at Jerusalem,
which is in Judah.” While it is conceivable that recently concocted prophecies were represented
to Cyrus as being an authentic prediction from the eighth century, it is far more likely that he was
impressed by a genuinely ancient oracle containing his name more than a century before he was
born. It is most reasonable to assume that it was this circumstance which convinced him of the
reality and power of the God of the Hebrews, and impelled him to take the extraordinary
measure of authorizing a mass migration of Yahweh’s worshippers to their ancestral homeland.
But at the same time it should be recognized that he also restored some other captive peoples to
their native cities (ANET, p. 316), possibly to avoid appearing overly partial to the Jews alone.
Finally, it ought to be observed that a Babylonian standpoint does not really prevail as
extensively through Isaiah II as advocates of the two Isaiah theory have maintained. Subsequent
to chapter 48, clear allusions to the Exile and Restoration are hard to find. Many of the
discourses address themselves to conditions known to have prevailed in Judah in the reign of
Manasseh. J. A. Alexander appropriately points out: “How seldom, after all, the book mentions
Babylon, the Exile, or the Restoration.… An exact enumeration of all such cases, made for the
first time, might surprise one whose previous impressions had all been derived from the
sweeping declarations of interpreters and critics.” In other words, the advocates of Deutero-
Isaiah have attempted to find many allusions to the late sixth-century situation which are really
susceptible to quite other interpretations. It is also a fact that the name of Babylon occurs with
less frequency in chapters 40–66 than in 1–39. A statistical count shows that there are only four
occurrences in the later section (43:14; 47:1; 48:14, 20), but in chapters 1–39 there are nine
occurrences, or more than twice as many.
Internal evidence of the composition of Isaiah II in Palestine. A most important criterion for
dating ancient documents is found in those references or allusions to contemporary events or
surrounding conditions which it may happen to contain. The geographical setting which it
presupposes, the kind of plants and animals which it mentions, the climatic conditions which it
implies as prevailing in the author’s own environment—all these are important data for
determining the place and time for the composition of any document whether ancient or modern.
A careful examination of such allusions in Isa. 40–66 points unmistakably to the conclusion that
it was composed in Palestine rather than in Babylon. We have already seen that Bernard Duhm,
on a rationalistic basis, came to the same conclusion in 1892.
Isaiah 40–66 shows little knowledge of Babylonian geography, but great familiarity with that of
Palestine. Thus the trees referred to are not found in Babylonia, but are native to Palestine, such
as the cedar, cypress, and oak (cf 41:19, 44:14: “He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the
cypress and the oak … he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it”). The writer’s
geographical viewpoint is clearly Palestinian. Thus Yahweh is said to send off His decree to
Babylon (43:14). Israel is called the seed of Abraham which the Lord has taken from “the ends
of the earth” (apparently a reference to Babylonia) in 41:9 and 45:22. The same is true with the
phrases “from the east” and “from a far country” as employed in 46:11, and “from thence” rather
than “from hence” in 52:11 (“Depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing”)an
exhortation to the future exiles to leave Babylon as soon as the invitation has been given them by
the coming deliverer, Cyrus.
The author assumes that the cities of Judah are still standing. Compare 40:9: “Say unto the cities
of Judah, Behold your God!” This verse implies that Zion and the other cities of Judah are in
actual existence at the time of writing, rather than being uninhabited sites in the wake of
Chaldean devastation. The same is true of 62:6: “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O
Jerusalem.” Antisupernaturalists cannot explain this away as an ideal anticipation of cities which
are some day to be rebuilt. Such a defense would violate a cardinal maxim of their own, as
expressed by Driver, “The prophet speaks always, in the first instance, to his own
contemporaries; the message which he brings is intimately related to the circumstances of his
own time.… The prophet never abandons his own historical position, but speaks from it.”
It is only to be expected that if the cities are still standing, the Israelites themselves are assumed
to be dwelling in Palestine by the author of these prophecies. Thus in 58:6 we read: “Is not this
the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to
let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” This would be very strange language to
address to a people who were groaning under the bondage of the Chaldeans as a captive people.
It is very evident that the Jews are still dwelling in their own land and are competent to hold their
own law courts. Only thus would it be possible for corrupt judges to pervert the administration of
the law to the disadvantage of the less privileged classes of society.
Evidence for the pre-exilic composition of Isaiah II. We have seen there is no good support for a
Babylonian origin of Isaiah II. The internal evidence as it has been detailed above has shown
how indefensible was this element in the theory of Deutero-Isaiah, as it was propounded by
Doederlein, Eichhorn, and Rosenmueller. More recent scholars tend to regard Isaiah II as having
been composed either in Palestine or in the region of Lebanon to the north. They nevertheless
insist that chapters 40–66 were composed late, either in the exilic or post-exilic period. It
remains to be shown that this theory also fails to account for the data of the internal evidence.
In the first place, many of the same evils which prevailed in the time of the eighth-century Isaiah
are evidently still current in the generation of the author of Isaiah II. Note for example Isa. 57:7,
“Upon a high and lofty mountain you have made your bed. You also went up there to offer
sacrifice.” Bloodshed and violence are denounced in 1:15: “Yea, when ye make many prayers, I
will not hear: your hands are full of blood,” and they are still being denounced in 59:3, 7: “For
your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies,
your tongue hath muttered perverseness.… Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed
innocent blood.” In both parts of the book, the prophet inveighs against the prevalent falsehood,
injustice, and oppression which were practiced in Judah. Compare 10:12 “Woe unto them that
decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; to turn aside
the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows
may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless” with 59:4–9, where the indictment is
very similar: “None cafleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak
lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.”
Both in Isaiah I and II, a revolting hypocrisy characterizes the religious life of the nation.
Compare 29:13: “Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do
honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the
precept of men” with 58:2, 4: “Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation
that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances
of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.… Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to
smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be
heard on high.” Moreover, in both sections of the book the Jews are assumed to be practicing
their orgiastic rites in the sacred groves. (In 1:29: “They shall be ashamed of the oaks which they
have desired”; and in 57:5: “Ye that inflame yourselves among the oaks, under every green tree,”
ASV.)
Although the same types of sin are assumed to be prevalent by the author in both parts of Isaiah,
it should be observed that there is a difference. In 40–66 the author refers to an extreme
degeneracy and breakdown of morals which accords with no known period of Jewish history so
closely as with the age of Manasseh, who “shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled
Jerusalem from one end to another” (2 Kings 21:16). One has only to read 2 Kings 21 and Isa. 59
to see the close correspondence. Thus 59:10: “We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope
as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead
men.” So also verses 13–14: “In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away
from our God, spealdng oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of
falsehood. And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is
fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.”
A most decisive objection to a post-exilic date for the composition of Isaiah II is to be found in
the numerous passages which refer to idolatry as a wide and prevalent evil in Israel. Isaiah 44:9–
20 contains a long diatribe against the folly of making graven images for worship, as if this were
a major problem in contemporary Judah. This passage cannot be dismissed as a mere challenge
to contemporary pagan nations, for there are too many other passages which speak of idolatry
being practiced by the author’s own countrymen at that time (cf. 57:4–5, “Against whom do ye
sport yourselves?… Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children
in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks?”).
Not only is ritual prostitution here referred to, but also the sacrificing of babies to Molech and
Adrammelech, an infamous practice carried on during the reign of Manasseh in the Valley of the
Sons of Hinnom (2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chron. 33:6). And again, Isa. 57:7: “Upon a lofty and high
mountain hast thou set thy bed; even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice.” This is an
obvious allusion to worship in the high places (bāmôt), a type of worship which flourished in the
pre-exilic period, but never thereafter. Again, 65:2–4: “I have spread out my hands all the day
unto a rebellious people … a people that provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in
gardens, and burning incense upon bricks; that sit among the graves, and lodge in the secret
places; that eat swine’s flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels” (ASV). In the
very last chapter we find that idolatry is still being practiced. In 66:17: “They that sanctify
themselves and purify themselves to go unto the gardens, behind one in the midst [or, one
asherah], eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, they shall come to an end
together, saith Jehovah” (ASV). Plainly these things represent vicious evils and degenerate pagan
abominations which were going on at the time the prophet composed these words.
Let us carefully consider the implications of this prevalence of idolatry in Judah. The hilly or
mountainous terrain referred to completely excludes the possibility of idolatrous worship being
carried on in Babylonia, which was a flat, alluvial terrain. The types of worship alluded to are
precisely those which are described as having been cultivated in the reign of Manasseh. So far as
the post-exilic period is concerned, it is agreed by scholars of every persuasion that the returning
Jews who resettled Judah from 536 to 450 brought back no idol worship with them. The terrible
ordeal of the Babylonian captivity had brought about a complete rejection of graven images on
the part of the Jewish remnant. This complete freedom from idolatry in post-exilic Judea is
proved beyond all reasonable doubt by the writings of the admittedly post-exilic authors, notably
the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, and the historians Ezra and Nehemiah. Many and
various were the evils which arose in the Second Commonwealth during the century which
elapsed between Zerubbabel and Malachi, and these evils are clearly described and earnestly
denounced both by Ezra and Nehemiah. The book of Malachi contains a list of sins into which
his countrymen had fallen. Yet none of these suggests the slightest practice of idolatry. There
was intermarriage with foreign women of idolatrous background; there was oppression of the
poor by the rich; there was desecration of the Sabbath; there was a withholding of tithes—but
none of these authors ever mentions the reappearance of idolatry in the land of Judah. There was
also acceptance of blemished, defective animals for sacrifice, Mal. 1:12–14. The only possible
conclusion to draw is that the worship of graven images there was unknown. Not until the age of
Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century B.C. was any real effort made to introduce it once
more among the Israelite people. Therefore, in the light of this evidence, it is impossible to hold
that Isaiah II was composed at any time after the exile, or indeed after the fall of Jerusalem.
Some Liberal scholars have felt compelled to make slight concessions in this direction and admit
the possibility of late pre-exilic strands in Isaiah II. Thus Bentzen notes that “in like manner
63:7–65:25 may be connected with the events of 587 B.C.” W. H. Brownlee likewise comments:
“It is not impossible that there are some pre-exilic prophecies among the oracles of Volume II.
Note especially 56:9–57:13; 58:1–9 as of possible pre-exilic origin.” It can easily be seen how
damaging to the theory of Isaiah II are such admissions as these. If such considerable passages
on the basis of their contemporary allusions are to be dated prior to the fall of Jerusalem, the
possibility arises that many other sections which do not happen to contain contemporary
allusions may also have been of pre-exilic origin. In other words, if portions of these twenty-
seven chapters demand a time of composition prior to the downfall of the Jewish monarchy, and
there are no other passages which demand an exilic or post-exilic origin (except upon the basis of
a philosophic a priori that all fulfilled predictions are vaticinia ex eventu), then the only
reasonable deduction to draw is that the entire work was composed prior to 587 B.C. This means
that the whole case for Deutero- or Trito-Isaiah falls to the ground, simply on the basis of the
internal evidence of the text itself.

24
Isaiah (continued)

Isaiah: Alleged Differences in Language and Style

PROPONENTS OF THE ISAIAH II THEORY affirm that there are very definite and marked
contrasts in style between Isaiah I and Isaiah II, and that these can be accounted for only by a
difference in authorship. The purpose of the ensuing discussion will be to show that the stylistic
similarities between the two parts are even more significant than the alleged differences, and that
such differences as there are may easily be accounted for by the change in situation which
confronted Isaiah in his later years, and also by the maturing of his literary genius. Numerous
parallels to this may be pointed out in the history of world literature. Thus in the case of John
Milton, we find far more striking dissimilarities between Paradise Lost, which he composed in
later years, and the style of L’Allegro or Il Penseroso, which appeared in his earlier period. A
similar contrast is observable between his prose works such as Christian Doctrine and
Areopagitica. Or, to take an example from German literature, Goethe’s Faust Part II presents
striking contrasts in concept, style, and approach as over against Faust Part I. These contrasts are
far more obvious than those between Isaiah I and Isaiah II. In his Dictionary of the Bible (p.
339a), Davis points out that in the twenty-five years of Shakespeare’s activity, four distinct
periods can be distinguished in his dramatic productions, each period being marked by clear
differences in style.
As in the case of Pentateuchal criticism, dissectionists of Isaiah have resorted to lists of rare or
unique words or phrases in order to confirm a diversity of authorship. But this type of evidence
has to be handled with the greatest care in order to come out to valid results. Mere word lists may
prove little or nothing. In the case of the Latin poet Horace, some of the best-known phrases
from his Ars Poetica, such as callida junctura, in medias res, and ad unguem, occur nowhere
else in the writings of this poet. Yet far from being considered spurious because unique, they are
very frequently quoted as examples of Horace’s literary skill. So far as Isaiah is concerned,
Nagelsbach points out: “For among the chapters of Isaiah that are acknowledged genuine, there
is not a single one which does not contain thoughts and words that are new and peculiar to it
alone.”
1. The stylistic resemblances between Isaiah I and Isaiah II are numerous and striking. Most
distinctive of all is the characteristic title of God which occurs frequently throughout Isaiah and
only five times elsewhere in the Old Testament. This title is “the Holy One of Israel” (qeḏôš
Yiśrā˓ē˒l), which expresses a central theological emphasis that dominates all the prophecies
contained in this book. A statistical count shows that it occurs twelve times in chapters 1–39 and
fourteen times in chapters 40–66. Elsewhere in the Old Testament it only occurs in Pss. 71:22;
89:18 and Jer. 50:29; 51:5: Whether or not Isaiah actually invented this title, it became a sort of
authoritative seal for all of his writing. Thus it furnishes very strong evidence of the unity of the
entire production. The only alternative possible to advocates of the Deutero-Isaiah theory is to
assert that the unknown prophet or prophets who contributed to chapters 40–66 were so
dominated by the influence and message of the eighth-century Isaiah that they felt constrained to
employ his favorite title of God with even greater frequency than he did himself. But such an
explanation does not account for the almost complete absence of this title in the writings of other
post-exilic authors who certainly could not have been ignorant of the eighth-century Isaiah.
Furthermore, this type of evasion appears to savor of circular reasoning: Isaiah II must have been
written by a different author from Isaiah I because of the stylistic differences; but where the most
striking stylistic similarities are pointed out, these indicate only that the later author was a pupil
or imitator of the original author. Thus the facts are made to conform to the theory, rather than
deriving the theory from the facts (i.e., from the textual data).
Conservative scholars have pointed out at least forty or fifty sentences or phrases which appear
in both parts of Isaiah, and indicate its common authorship. Of these the following are typical:
“For the mouth of Yahweh hath spoken it” (ASV) occurs in 1:20; 40:5; 58:14.
“I act, and who can reverse it?” (43:13, NASB) is very close to “His hand is stretched out, and
who shall turn it back?” (14:27).
“And the ransomed of Yahweh shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting
joy shall be upon their heads” (ASV) occurs in both 35:10 and 51:11.
“Will assemble the outcasts of Israel” (11:12) is very close to “gathereth the outcasts of Israel” in
56:8.
“For Yahweh hath a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion” (34:8, ASV)
greatly resembles 61:2, “to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor, and the day of vengeance of
our God” (ASV).
“The lion shall eat straw like the ox.… They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain”
appears both in 11:6–9 and 65:25.
“For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” (35:6) is very close to “I
will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (41:18).
“And the Spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding” (11:2,
ASV) is quite similar to, “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because Yahweh has
anointed me” (61:1, ASV).
In 35:8 we meet with the figure of the highway of Yahweh which runs through the wilderness or
desert; the same thought occurs in 40:3.
“I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.… Your new moons and
appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them” (1:11, 14)
is very similar to “Thou hast filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast burdened me
with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities” (43:24, ASV).
“In that day will Yahweh of hosts become a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, unto the
residue of his people” (28:5, ASV) greatly resembles, “Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in
the land of Yahweh, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God” (63:3, ASV).
Even the use of the imperfect tense of ˒āmar “to say” with Yahweh as subject (rather than the
usual perfect tense ˒āmar), namely yō˒mar YHWH (“Yahweh is saying”) is a peculiarity of
Isaiah, and occurs both in I and II (cf. E. J. Young, Who Wrote Isaiah? chap. 8).
In view of these and many other parallels which can be cited, it is difficult to see how an
unprejudiced observer could fail to be impressed by such numerous instances of resemblance.
These distinctive turns of expression which so obviously bear the stamp of originality and yet
which occur in both portions of the book indicate that the same author must have composed the
entire production.
2. It should be pointed out that the literary resemblances of Isaiah II to the eighth-century
prophet Micah are numerous and striking. This would hardly be expected of a writer who
composed in the sixth or fifth century B.C. Here are some examples:
“For ye shall not go out in haste … for Yahweh will go before you” (Isa. 52:12, ASV); “And
their king is passed on before them, and Yahweh at the head of them” (Mic. 2:13, ASV).
“Declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins” (Isa. 58:1); “I
am full of power … to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin” (Mic. 3:8).
“They shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet;
and thou shalt know that I am the Lord” (Isa. 49:23); “They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they
shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God”
(Mic. 7:17).
“Behold, I have made thee to be a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth; thou shalt thresh
the mountains … and shalt make the hills as chaff” (Isa. 41:15–16, ASV); “Arise and thresh, O
daughter of Zion; for I will make thy horn iron … and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples”
(Mic. 4:13, ASV).
Whether Isaiah was influenced by Micah or Micah by Isaiah is hard to say; quite possibly they
were familiar with each other’s preaching. It may also have been that the Holy Spirit moved
them both to express God’s message to the same generation in similar terms. At any rate, they
express the same general mood and viewpoint, and deal very largely with the same issues. In this
connection we might mention Hosea 13:4: “Thou shalt know no god but me, and besides me
there is no saviour” (ASV). This sentence appears twice in Isaiah II, in 43:11 and 45:21, thus
indicating a close relationship. (Since Hosea was slightly earlier than Isaiah, it is quite possible
that the younger prophet deliberately borrowed from the older.)

Isaiah: Alleged Differences in Theological Ideas

It is asserted by the advocates of the two-Isaiah theory that Deutero-Isaiah dwells upon the
infiniteness of God and His sovereign relationship toward the heathen nations in a way that is far
more developed and emphatic than in Isaiah I. On the other hand, Isaiah II makes no mention of
the Messianic King nor of the faithful remnant; rather, the dominating concept is that of the
suffering Servant. To these allegations it may be replied that no genuine contradictions have ever
been pointed out in the theology of the two sections of Isaiah, nor has any critic ever
demonstrated that the new emphases which do appear in chapters 40–66 are not sufficiently
accounted for by the changed conditions which occurred in the reign of the wicked and
idolatrous Manasseh. Actually there is no doctrine set forth in 40–66 which is not already
contained, in germ at least, in 1–39. With the influx of idolatry in the kingdom of Judah and the
worship of heathen gods, which became fashionable in Manasseh’s time, a challenge was
presented to the true faith that called for just such an emphasis upon the uniqueness and
sovereignty of Yahweh as we find in Isa. 40–48. As for the doctrine of the Messiah, the
inevitability of judgment upon apostate Israel quite logically led to the development of the
doctrine of vicarious atonement, apart from which there could be no reasonable hope for the
spiritual survival of the nation. This accounts for the prominence of the concept of the suffering
Servant, or the Servant of Yahweh, in Isaiah II.

KEY MESSIANIC PROPHECIES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Gen. 3:15 Messiah to reconcile men to God; fully

human, born of a woman, He will utterly
defeat Satan

22:18 He will be of the family of Abraham

49:10 He will be of the kingly tribe of Judah

Deut. 18:15 He will be a prophet who, like Moses,

revealed the word of God

Ps. 2:1–2 He will be tried by Gentile rulers and

condemned by His own Jewish people

16:10 Through resurrection, by the Father, Jesus’

body will not see corruption

22:1 He will experience the rejection of the

Father at His death

22:6–7 He will be mocked at His crucifixion

22:22 Christ will glorify God in His church after

His resurrection
 40:6–8 Christ delighted in all the Father’s will

69:7–12 Christ would be rejected by men

69:21 Christ would drink gall at His crucifixion

89:4 Christ will be the eternal seed of David

89:26–28 Christ will be God’s eternal son, His unique

first born

110:1 He will ascend to the right hand of the

Father, and be coronated

110:4 His priesthood will be eternal, after the

manner of Melchizedek

132:11 He will be the lineage of David

Isa. 7:14 Christ will have a virgin birth; He will be

called Immanuel

7:15–16 He will grow up in a land dominated by a

foreign power

9:1–2 He will minister in Galilee

9:7 He will be of the line of David, but His

kingship will be eternal and He will be the
Son of God

11:2 He will be anointed with the Holy Spirit

11:4 He will minister perfect justice regerding the

poor and the meek

24:16 Christ will offer salvation to the entire world

40:3 He will have a forerunner

42:1 Christ will be the great anointed Servant of

Yahweh

42:2 His ministry will be gentle

 42:6 Christ will be the fulfillment of God’s
covenant

49:6 Christ will be a light to the Gentiles

52:14 He would be disfigured by the abuses He

suffered prior to crucifixion

53:4 Christ will bear all our diseases

53:5 He will provide atonement for sin

53:9 He will be buried in a rich man’s tomb

53:10 The Father will prolong Christ’s days by

resurrecting Him from the dead

Dan. 9:24 His public ministry to begin in A.D. 26,

which would be 483 years after the decree
to Ezra to rebuild Jerusalem; 3 1/2 years
later (in the middle of the seven year
“week”) the Messiah would be crucified
while atoning for sin as the “Most Holy”
One

Mic. 5:2 Jesus would be born in Bethlehem

Zech. 9:9 He would enter Jerusalem on a donkey’s

colt

11:12 Christ would be betrayed for 30 pieces of

silver

12:10 He would be pierced for our transgressions

(Isa. 53:5)

Much discussion has been devoted to the question of the identity of the Servant of Yahweh, who
is referred to in various passages from chapter 41 to 53. Rationalists are compelled by their
philosophical presuppositions to deny that the suffering Servant was intended as a prophecy of
Jesus Christ. In their search for some more contemporary figure with whom the Servant might be
identified, most modern antisupernaturalists resort to the same identification as that favored by
modern Judaism that the suffering Servant is equivalent to the Jewish nation. But there can be
little doubt that this identification leads to insuperable difficulties in those “Servant songs” which
refer to the Messiah. Thus, in Isa. 53:4, 5, 8, 9, this type of exegesis would result in making
Israel bear vicariously their own sins; that Israel itself was smitten rather than the Servant; that
the nation of Israel did not open its mouth before its judge, and that the whole Jewish race was
carried off by a judicial murder and was buried with a certain rich man. Such an interpretation
results in self-contradictory nonsense.
The only satisfactory explanation for the Servant concept in Isaiah is that it is of a three-
dimensional character. As Delitzsch put it, the Servant may be symbolized by a pyramid. At the
base of the pyramid is the Hebrew nation as a whole (as in 41:8 and 42:19). Israel is regarded as
God’s uniquely chosen people charged with the responsibility of witnessing to the true God
before the heathen nations, and serving as custodians of His Word. At the middle level (43:10),
the remnant of true believers in Israel will constitute the redeemed people of God and serve as
witnesses to their unspiritual countrymen. At the apex of the pyramid stands a single individual,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is set forth as the true Israel (for apart from Him there could not be a
covenant nation of Israel, and from Him the nation derives all its standing before God). It is this
Servant who will arise as Redeemer and Deliverer from sin by bearing in His own person the
death penalty in the place of sinners. There are four main “Servant Songs.”

Additional Proofs of the Genuineness of Isaiah 40–66

1. First of all it should be noted that Jesus ben Sirach (48:22–25) clearly assumes that Isaiah
wrote chapters 40–66 of the book of Isaiah. E. J. Young notes, “The tradition of Isaianic
authorship appears as early as Ecclesiasticus. In 14:17–25 we read, ‘He [that is, Isaiah]
comforted them that mourned in Zion. He showed the things that should be to the end of time
and the hidden things before they ever came to pass’.” It is to be observed that the term used for
comfort, parakalein, is the same as is used in the LXX of Isa. 40:1 and of 61:1–2. The Hebrew
original of Ecclesiasticus uses exactly the same word as Isaiah does, the verb wayyinnahem.
2. The New Testament writers clearly regard the author of Isaiah I and Isaiah II to be one and the
same. Many of the New Testament quotations could be interpreted as referring to the book
merely according to its traditional title, but there are other references which clearly imply the
personality of the historic Isaiah himself.
Matthew 12:17–18 quotes Isa. 42:1 as “that which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet.”
Matthew 3:3 quotes Isa. 40:3 as “spoken of by the prophet Isaiah.”
Luke 3:4 quotes Isa. 40:3–5 as “in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet.”
Acts 8:28 states that the Ethiopian eunuch was “reading Isaiah the prophet,” specifically, Isa.
53:7–8. In his conversation with Philip (Acts 8:34) he inquired, “Of whom speaketh the prophet
[Isaiah] this, of himself, or of some other man?”
Romans 10:16 quotes Isa. 53:1, stating: “Isaiah saith—”
Romans 10:20 quotes Isa. 65:1, stating: “Isaiah is very bold, and saith—”
The most conclusive New Testament citation is John 12:38–41. Verse 38 quotes Isa. 53:1; verse
40 quotes Isa. 6:9–10. Then the inspired apostle comments in verse 41: “These things said Isaiah,
when he saw his glory, and spoke of him.” Obviously it was the same Isaiah who personally
beheld the glory of Christ in the temple vision of Isa. 6 who also made the statement in Isa. 53:1:
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” If it was not the
same author who composed both chapter 6 and chapter 53 (and advocates of the Deutero-Isaiah
theory stoutly affirm that it was not), then the inspired apostle himself must have been in error. It
therefore follows that advocates of the two-Isaiah theory must by implication concede the
existence of errors in the New Testament, even in so vital a matter as the authorship of inspired
books of the Old Testament.
3. A most formidable difficulty is presented to the Deutero-Isaiah theory by the fact that the
author’s name was not preserved. It is quite inconceivable that his name should have been
forgotten had he been some individual other than the eighth-century Isaiah himself. By the
admission of the Dissectionist Critics themselves, no sublimer passages of prophecy are to be
found in the entire Old Testament than are contained in Isaiah II. It is commonly conceded that
the author of these passages must be regarded as the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets.
How could it have come about that such a preeminent genius should have diminished so rapidly
in stature that by the third century B.C. when the Septuagint was translated, his name should have
been completely forgotten? The earliest extrabiblical reference we have to the writings of Isaiah
is found in Ecclesiasticus 48:17–25 (180 B.C.). Here the author (Jesus ben Sirach) refers to the
fact that “he [Isaiah] comforted them that mourned in Zion.… He showed the things that should
be to the end of time, and the hidden things before ever they happened” (this last being an
allusion to Isa. 48:6). Here the same word for comfort (parakalein) is used as was employed by
the Septuagint in translating Isa. 40:1. It is scarcely conceivable that the pupil could have so far
surpassed his master and yet remained anonymous. But this is the incredible assumption, hardly
to be paralleled in the rest of the world literature, to which the advocates of this divisive theory
are driven.
It should be observed in this connection that an almost invariable rule followed by the ancient
Hebrews in regard to prophetic writings was that the name of the prophet was essential for the
acceptance of any prophetic utterance. This is emphasized by the fact that even so brief a
composition as the prophecy of Obadiah bore the name of the author. The Hebrews regarded the
identity of the prophet as of utmost importance if his message was to be received as an
authoritative declaration of a true spokesman of the Lord. As E. J. Young points out (IOT, p.
205), it is altogether contrary to the genius of biblical teaching to postulate the existence of
anonymous writing prophets. And if the shortest, least-gifted of the Minor Prophets was
remembered by name in connection with his written messages, it surely follows that the
sublimest prophet the nation ever produced should have left his name to posterity. We must
therefore conclude that the name of the author of Isa. 40–66 has indeed been preserved and that it
was the eighth-century prophet himself.
4. The linguistic evidence is altogether adverse to the composition of Isaiah II in Babylon during
the sixth century. In the writings of Ezra and Nehemiah, who came from the region of Babylon
or from Susa (if not from the Persian centers of Ecbatana and Persepolis), we have a fair sample
of the type of Hebrew spoken by Jews who returned from the Exile to Palestine and settled in
their homeland during the fifth century. These writings show a certain amount of linguistic
intrusion from Aramaic and are sprinkled with Babylonian terms. But there is complete absence
of such influence in the language of Isaiah II. It is written in perfectly pure Hebrew, free from
any postexilic characteristics and closely resembles the Hebrew of Isaiah I.
5. Isaiah 13:1 furnishes serious embarrassment to the theory of an exilic Deutero-Isaiah. Chapter
13 contains a burden of divine judgment upon the city of Babylon, which in Isaiah’s day was a
mere subject province under the Assyrian empire. Nevertheless, this opening verse states: “The
burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.” This constitutes the clearest
affirmation possible that the eighth-century Isaiah foresaw the coming importance of Babylon,
her devastation of Palestine, and her ultimate downfall before the onslaughts of the Medes (cf. v.
17). In view of the often repeated argument that Isaiah’s name does not appear in chapters 40–66
and that therefore he is not to be regarded as the author of predictions involving a knowledge of
sixth-century events, it is interesting to observe that his name is expressly affixed to this earlier
chapter in which such a knowledge is most clearly implied.
It should be noted that chapter 13 occurs in a series of burdens pronounced against foreign
nations who posed a threat to Israel (chaps. 13–23). It is quite clear that the eighth-century Isaiah
wrote denunciations of this sort, and the language of chapter 13 is altogether similar to that
employed in the rest of the chapters in this series. It is only in the interests of salvaging the
theory of a Deutero-Isaiah that critics have been compelled to assign a late exilic date to chapter
13. But as E. J. Young points out: “If chapter 13 be denied Isaiah, it is practically impossible to
explain its position in the prophecy. Why would a later editor ever have thought that Isaiah had
prophesied concerning Babylon?” This point is especially well taken in view of the fact that
denunciations of Babylon do occur in other parts of the book (e.g., in chap. 48). It is difficult to
see why chapter 13 would have been placed in close proximity to these other denunciations if in
point of fact it was not composed at the same time.
6. Last, we come to the relationship between Isaiah II and the seventh-century pre-exilic
prophets. Zephaniah, Nahum, and Jeremiah contain verses which are so similar to Isaiah II as to
point to a possible borrowing by one from the other. Thus in Zeph. 2:15 we read: “This is the
joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me”
(ASV). This bears a strong resemblance to Isa. 47:8: “Now therefore hear this, thou that art given
to pleasures, that sittest securely, that sayest in thy heart, I am, and there is none else besides me”
(ASV). Nahum 1:15 reads: “Behold, upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace!” (ASV). Compare this with Isa. 52:7: “How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!” (ASV).
Jeremiah 31:35 reads: “Thus saith Yahweh … who stirreth up the sea, so that the waves thereof
roar; Yahweh of hosts is his name” (ASV). This is very close to Isa. 51:15: “For I am Yahweh
thy God, who stirreth up the sea, so that the waters thereof roar; Yahweh of hosts is his name”
(ASV).
In comparing such resemblances as these, it might be argued that Isaiah II was borrowing from
the seventh-century prophets rather than the other way around, but in the case of Jer. 30:10–11
(which bears a relationship to Isa. 43:1–6), such an explanation is hardly possible. In the
Jeremiah passage, the term My Servant (˒âbdɩ̂ ) occurs as a Messianic title. Nowhere else does it
appear in a Messianic sense in the writings of Jeremiah, and yet it is a frequent term in Isaiah II.
There can be no other reasonable conclusion to draw but that Jeremiah did the borrowing and
that the Isaiah passage must have been written at an earlier time than his own.
In view of all the foregoing evidence, it may fairly be said that it requires a far greater exercise of
credulity to believe that Isa. 40–66 was not written by the historical eighth-century Isaiah than to
believe that it was. Judging from the internal evidence alone, even apart from the authority of the
New Testament authors, a fair handling of the evidence can only lead to the conclusion that the
same author was responsible for both sections and that no part of it was composed as late as the
Exile.

25
Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk

Nahum

THE NAME of the prophet (Nahum) signifies “consolation” His theme deals with the holiness of
God, a holiness which involves both retribution toward rebellious unbelievers and compassion
toward His own people, especially those who sincerely believe and trust in Him alone. The
believer is represented as rejoicing at the sight of God’s righteous vindication of His holiness in
the destruction of the God-defying power of Assyria.

Outline of Nahum

I. A psalm of God’s majesty, 1:1–2:2

A. God’s vengeance upon sinners and His goodness toward His own people, 1:2–11
B. The coming restoration of Judah, 1:12–2:2
II. Prophecy of the fall of Nineveh, 2:3–3:19
A. The siege and destruction of the city, 2:3–13
B. Reason for Nineveh’s fall, 3:1–19

Nahum: Place of the Author’s Origin

Nahum is stated to have been a native of Elkosh, but the identification of this town is in much
dispute. There are four competing theories: (1) Jerome identified it as Elkesi or El Kauze in
Galilee. (2) Others identified it as Capernaum, since Capernaum (Kepar-Nāḥûm) signifies the
village of Nahum. According to this theory, Elkosh would have been later renamed after its most
celebrated citizen. (3) Some identified it with Alqush near Mosul in Assyria, although the
foundation of this conjecture is very slight. (4) Still others have pointed to Elcesei, which
according to Pseudepiphanius was a village of Judah below Bet Gabre in the territory of Simeon,
midway between Jerusalem and Gaza. Eiselen, Raven, and Young concur in favoring this fourth
conjecture, since the internal evidence of the text suggests that the author was a native of the
kingdom of Judah, rather than of the Galilean region.

Nahum: Date of Composition

Since Nahum refers to the fall of Thebes to the armies of Ashurbanipal as a past event, and this
event took place in 661 B.C., the prophecy must have been written subsequently to that time. On
the other hand, the fall of Nineveh is predicted as a future occurrence; therefore the work must
have been produced prior to 612 B.C. Walter Maier in his posthumous Book of Nahum: A
Commentary (1959) marshals considerable evidence to indicate the 654 date when Nineveh was
still in its glory. Other scholars prefer a time closer to the fulfillment, perhaps 625 or 620 B.C.
Rationalist critics who explain this fulfilled prediction as a prophecy after the event naturally
date it after 612. Some of them, like Robert Pfeiffer, regard only 2:3–3:19 as original and explain
chapter 1 as partly original and partly supplemented by a redactor (sometime around 300 B.C.).
Pfeiffer alleges that 1:2–10 has nothing to do with Nineveh but is a corrupted piece of acrostic
poetry of a type that did not become popular until the fourth century B.C. It should be pointed
out, however, that as the text stands, there is virtually nothing acrostic about it. Instead of
following along in the order of the letters of the alphabet (as an acrostic poem is supposed to do),
the opening letters of verses 2–10 come in the following order in the Hebrew alphabet: 1, 10, 3,
5, 12, 9, 6, 13, and 11. Only by the most radical emendations and reshuffling of verses can the
acrostic theory be made out. Furthermore a late origin for acrostic poems has never been proved
by any kind of objective evidence. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are largely acrostic, and the
same is true of Davidic Psalms like 25 and 34, and the post-Davidic Ps. 119 (176 vv.) is entirely
acrostic.

Message of Nahum

Nahum 2:6 contains a remarkably exact prediction, for subsequent history records that a vital
part of the city walls of Nineveh was carried away by a great flood, and this ruin of the defensive
system permitted the besieging Medes and Chaldeans to storm the city without difficulty. Some
have objected to the joyous attitude with which Nahum greets the prospect of the fall of
Assyria’s capital, and regard it as an exhibition of nationalistic fanaticism and vengeful malice.
This however, is a misunderstanding of the ground which the prophet occupies. Because he is a
man of God, he speaks as one who is wholly preoccupied with the Lord’s cause on earth. His
earnest desire is to see Jehovah vindicate His holiness in the eyes of the heathen, as over against
the inhumane and ruthless tyranny of that God-defying empire which had for such a long time
trampled upon all its subject nations with heartless brutality. Only by a crushing and exemplary
destruction of Assyria could the world be taught that might does not, in the long run, make right,
and that even the mightiest infidel is absolutely helpless before the judicial wrath of Yahweh.
The fact that the God of Israel could predict with such startling accuracy the fact and the manner
of Nineveh’s fall was best calculated to prove to the ancient world the sovereignty of the one true
God. It was a most remarkable reversal of fortune for the proud pagan capital to fall to its
enemies within less than two decades after the reign of the mighty Ashurbanipal. In just fourteen
years after his decease in 626 B.C., the apparently invincible empire which he had so successfully
maintained toppled in ruins, never to rise again.

Zephaniah

The name of this prophet, Ṣephan-Yah, means “Jehovah has hidden (him).” The theme of his
message is that Jehovah is still firmly in control of all His world despite any contrary
appearances, and that He will prove this in the near future by inflicting terrible chastisement
upon disobedient Judah, and complete destruction upon the idolatrous Gentile nations. Only by a
timely repentance can this wrath be deferred.

Outline of Zephaniah

I. Day of the Lord prefigured, 1:1–3:7

A. In judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem, 1:1–2:3
B. In judgment upon the surrounding nations, 2:4–15
C. Woe upon Jerusalem because of her sin, 3:1–7
II. Establishment of the future kingdom, 3:8–20
A. Judgment of the nations, 3:8–13
B. Rejoicing remnant and the Messianic King, 3:14–20

Time and Authorship of the Prophecy of Zephaniah

Zephaniah is stated to be the son of Cushi and the great-grandson of a Hezekiah, who might
possibly have been King Hezekiah himself. But certain chronological considerations render this
virtually impossible. Apparently he lived in Jerusalem, for he refers to it as “this place” (1:4),
describing its topography with intimate knowledge. He probably delivered his message in the
early part of Josiah’s reign, doubtless prior to to the revival of 621 B.C. The moral and religious
conditions then prevailing were still low, owing to the evil influence of the reigns of Manasseh
and Amon (cf 3:1–3, 7).
Some rationalist critics have challenged the authenticity of 2:4–15 and 3:18–20 and have
conjectured that these passages were of post-exilic origin. Their principal criterion for such a
dating is a theory of how the Hebrew religious thought developed from stage to stage in
evolutionary progression. Eissfeldt and others have preferred a post-exilic date for the judgment
against Moab and Ammon (2:8–11) because of their resemblance to Obadiah (who according to
them was early exilic). But as Moeller points out, this passage harmonizes very well with the
denunciation of Jerusalem and Judah to which it is juxtaposed.
 Message of Zephaniah

The prophet seems to make reference (1:10–18) to the sudden and devastating invasion of the
Scythians, who swooped down from the Caucasus region about 630 B.C. and swarmed over
Media and Assyria. Next they ravaged Syria, and according to Herodotus, so threatened Egypt
that Psammetichus I had to buy them off. (It should be mentioned, however, that this account of
Herodotus is not supported by other ancient evidence, and is moreover embellished with such
implausible details as to make it unsafe to accept without some reservations This scourge of
warlike nomads served to warn Israel of the approaching day of Jehovah, when Judah was to be
devastated. The prophet states that Philistia also will experience His judgment (2:4–7) and
become virtually depopulated; likewise Moab and Ammon (which are to be annihilated like
Sodom), Ethiopia, and Assyria. The Assyrian capital of Nineveh is to become a howling
wilderness occupied only by wild beasts (2:13).
Along with all this dire warning, there is also an appeal for repentance, addressed primarily to
the remnant of Judah, rather than to the nation as a whole: “Seek ye Jehovah, all ye meek of the
earth, that have kept his ordinances; seek righteousness, seek [i.e., aim at, practice] meekness [or
humility]” (2:3, ASV). This appeal was the one to which Josiah’s sympathizers responded, even
though they were unable to retain power in Judah after their hero’s untimely death in the battle of
Megiddo (609 B.C.).
There seems to be a very definite millennial overtone to the promise of the ultimate blessedness
of Israel in 3:13: “The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies … for they shall feed
and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.” (Note here the reminiscence of Mic. 4:4 from a
previous century). The future age will be one of universal faith, and all nations, even those
beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, shall serve Yahweh with one consent and shall speak the same
language of faith (3:9–10).

Habakkuk

The name Ḥabaqquq is an unusual one of uncertain meaning; possibly it signified ardent
embrace, from ḥabaq, “embrace” (Eiselen in ISBE). Some have suggested that it was the name
of a garden plant which the Assyrians called ḫambaqūqu, but which cannot as yet be identified.
The theme of this prophecy concerns the problems of faith in the face of apparent difficulties
hindering the fulfillment of God’s promises. These difficulties are grappled with and solved in
the light of God’s continuing revelation, and the prophet closes in a psalm of joyous trust.

Outline of Habakkuk

I. Problems of faith, 1:1–2:20

A. How can a holy God permit unholiness to go unchecked? 1:1–12
1. Oppression unchecked in Judah, 1:2–5
 2. The Chaldeans as God’s scourge, 1:6–12
B. How can God permit a wicked nation to triumph over His covenant people? 1:13–2:20
1. Ruthless cruelty and crass idolatry of the Chaldeans, 1:13–17
2. The believer to wait humbly, trustingly for God’s answer, 2:1–4
3. Judgment of God will smite the Chaldeans because of their five sins, 2:5–9
4. God’s continued sovereignty over His earth, 2:20
II. Doubts all settled: the prayer of faith and unshakable trust, 3:1–19
A. Prayer for revival, 3:1–2
B. Past judgments of the Lord a sure token for the future, 3:3–16
C. The believer’s joy in God alone, assured of vindication of God’s holiness, 3:17–19

Habakkuk: Authorship and Time of Composition

Habakkuk seems to have performed his ministry in the reign of Jehoiakim, since the Chaldeans
are mentioned as already well known and of formidable reputation (1:6–10). This would best
agree with a time subsequent to the fall of Nineveh in 612, and perhaps even after
Nebuchadnezzar had achieved his triumph at the battle of Carchemish in 605. It is fair to
conclude that the prediction of the Chaldean subjugation of Palestine was intended for fairly
speedy fulfillment. (Whether it referred to Nebuchadnezzar’s first invasion in 605 or the second
invasion in 597, it is hard to say.) Habakkuk 1:2–4 points to an outbreak of rapacious
exploitation of the poor on the part of the Judean nobility; this might imply a time after the death
of Josiah (609). It is therefore reasonable to conclude that Habakkuk delivered his message
somewhere around 608 or 607 B.C.
Some critics are disinclined to refer 1:2–4 to native Jewish oppressors, but prefer to identify
them with the Egyptians (thus dating it at 608, during the brief ascendancy of Necho) or even
with the Assyrians (which would make it prior to 612, or perhaps as early as the reign of
Ashurbanipal, who died in 626). But there is no good evidence in the text of 1:2–4 that heathen
invaders are referred to; the manipulation of the law courts to favor the wealthy points to a
domestic evil between Jewish litigants (1:4).
Some critics feel that the material in chapters 1 and 2 has been rearranged by a later editor, even
though a pre-exilic Habakkuk may have been the author of each portion. But liberal critics
uniformly challenge his authorship of chapter 3 on the ground that it is a psalm rather than a
prophetic utterance, and that it mentions musical terms in its first and last verses. On these
grounds Pfeiffer dates this chapter in the fourth or third century B.C. But such an argument
assumes the validity of the supposition that the musical terms in the Davidic psalms are late, and
that despite Amos 6:5 and similar references, King David had nothing to do with music or song,
since he was a man of war. But for those who take seriously the biblical tradition that David was
very much concerned with the writing and singing of psalms, such musical terms constitute no
evidence of late authorship. Nor is there any compelling reason why a prophet would have been
incapable of composing a psalm of thanksgiving and praise to the Lord. Large portions of the
prophetic writings are highly poetic in character, as the critics themselves are swift to point out.
Some scholars have made much of the fact that the Habakkuk Commentary from the First
Qumran Cave omits the third chapter. Millar Burrows, however, remarks: “Its absence from the
scroll is consistent with this theory, but does not prove it. It does not even prove that the third
chapter was unknown to the Judean covenanters. Being a psalm, it does not lend itself to a
prophetic pesher as readily as the earlier chapters. It is even possible that the Commentary was
never finished. The Septuagint has all three chapters, but whether this particular part of the
Septuagint is older than the Habakkuk Commentary is another question.” The Habakkuk pesher
from Qumran Cave One does in fact include a sizable space for a column of text which was
never written out.

Message of Habakkuk

The rapacious Jewish nobles, allied with corrupt religious leaders, were shamelessly robbing and
oppressing the common people in Judah. Therefore they were to be punished through the
instrumentality of the Chaldeans. It is interesting to note that it was the upper classes that were
first taken into captivity in the two preliminary deportations of 605 and 597. The majority of the
lower classes was left in the land until the third deportation of 586.
But the prophet next sees that the conquering Chaldeans will themselves pose a serious problem
to reconcile with the doctrine of the holiness of God, for they are a bloody and ruthless people
who have no respect for the moral law. But instead of falling into an impatient cynicism,
Habakkuk sets a salutary example of waiting upon the Lord for His answer (2:1). In time, the
answer comes: the proud, self-confident sinner shall be condemned, his time is ripe, and only the
faithful believer shall stand acquitted before God’s judgment. Only he will partake of eternal life,
or even survive in this life in the onward progress of history (2:4). God has taken notice of the
sins of the Chaldeans and will gloriously vindicate Himself in the end as He brings judgment
upon them (2:13–14). With all these doubts settled, Habakkuk breaks forth into a psalm of holy
rejoicing and harks back to the days of the Exodus, the Conquest, and the times of the judges, to
recall past instances when God similarly vindicated His righteousness and demonstrated His
sovereignty to the world.
In many ways the prophecy of Habakkuk is unique. It is especially noteworthy in the style of its
approach. Instead of addressing the people directly as a spokesman of the Lord, Habakkuk
imparted God’s message by telling them how it first came to him and answered the questions that
were rising in his soul. With the possible exception of Daniel, no other biblical author employs
this particular technique.

26
Jeremiah and Lamentations
 Jeremiah

THE NAME JEREMIAH, Yirme-Yāhū, apparently means “Jehovah establishes” (Orelli in ISBE),
if the verb rāmâ (“to throw”) is to be understood in the sense of laying a foundation. The theme
of this prophet consists largely in a stern warning to Judah to turn from idolatry and sin to avoid
the catastrophe of exile. Every class of Hebrew society was condemned as inexcusably guilty. As
long as Judah refused to repent, the Babylonian Captivity was inevitable. The Hebrew nation
should submit to the Chaldean yoke, rather than to rebel against it, since it was a just
chastisement for their unfaithfulness to God’s covenant. Nevertheless, the day would come when
Israel would be delivered by the Messiah, the righteous Branch; therefore true Israel should
always trust in God alone, never in the arm of flesh.

Outline of Jeremiah

I. Prophecies under Josiah and Jehoiakim, 1:1–20:18

A. Prophet’s call and commission, 1:1–19
B. Sin and ingratitude of the nation, 2:1–3:5
C. Prediction concerning devastation from the north (the Chaldeans), 3:6–6:30
D. Threat of Babylonian exile, 7:1–10:25
E. Broken covenant and the sign of the girdle, 11:1–13:27
F. Drought; the sign of the unmarried prophet; the warning about the Sabbath, 14:1–17:27
G. Sign of the potter’s house, 18:1–20:18
II. Later prophecies under Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, 21:1–39:18
A. Nebuchadnezzar, God’s instrument to punish Zedekiah and Jerusalem, 21:1–29:32
B. The future Messianic kingdom 30:1–33:26
(The doctrine of individualism, 31:1–40)
C. Zedekiah’s sin and the loyalty of the Rechabites, 34:1–35:19
D. Jehoiakim’s opposition and his destruction of the prophetic scroll, 36:1–32
E. Jeremiah in jail during the siege, 37:1–39:18
III. Prophecies after the fall of Jerusalem, 40:1–45:5
A. Ministry among the remnant in Judah, 40:1–42:22
B. Ministry among the fugitives in Egypt, 43:1–44:30
C. Encouragement to Baruch, 45:1–5
IV. Prophecies against the heathen nations, 46:1–51:64
A. Egypt, 46:1–28
B. Philistia, 47:1–7
C. Moab, 48:1–47
D. Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Arabia, Elam, 49:1–39
E. Babylon, 50:1–51:64
V. Historical appendix, 52:1–34, (events of the fall and captivity of Judah)
 Jeremiah: Biography of the Author

Jeremiah began his ministry at about twenty years of age in the thirteenth year of Josiah, that is,
626 B.C. For the greater part of his life he lived in his hometown of Anathoth (for he was of a
priestly family) and appeared at Jerusalem at the annual feast days of the Jewish religious year.
He seems to have been well off financially, since he was able to purchase the forfeited estate of a
bankrupt kinsman without apparent difficulty. Under God-fearing Josiah, he remained
unmolested by the government and enjoyed such cordial relations with that king that he
composed an eloquent lamentation at the time of the king’s death at the battle of Megiddo. Yet,
even among his fellow priests and relatives, Jeremiah had built up considerable ill will because
of his forthright rebuke of their infidelity to the Covenant and his condemnation of their worldly
practices.
After Josiah’s death, with the rise of the idolatrous faction and the pro-Egyptian party, a serious
reaction resulted against Jeremiah and all he stood for. It was only through the interposition of a
few God-fearing elders and princes that Jeremiah escaped arrest for his unpalatable arraignment
of the nation in the “Temple Sermon” of chapters 7–10. From that time on he seems to have been
forbidden to enter the temple precinct, for he had to send aloud his secretary Baruch as his
spokesman whenever he had a message of God to proclaim before the people. He therefore
dictated his prophecies to Baruch that they might be read aloud to the people of Jerusalem. But
soon this copy was turned over to King Jehoiakim, who destroyed it in his fireplace, section by
section, as it was read to him by his own secretary. Later, King Zedekiah, a successor of
Jehoiakim, permitted the prophet to be incarcerated by the nationalistically minded nobles, who
saw Jeremiah as a traitor because he had urged the nation to submit to Babylon. Nevertheless,
Zedekiah was secretly fearful of God’s messenger because of the fulfillment of his past
predictions relative to the Chaldean invasion of 598. He therefore had the prophet rescued from
death when he was at the point of perishing in his brutal confinement and he kept him hidden
from danger until the fall of Jerusalem.

KINGS OF BABYLON/CHALDEA

King Date (B.C.)

Nabopolassar 612–605

Nebuchadnezzar 605–562

Evil-Merodach 561–560

Neriglissar 560–556

Labashi-Marduki 556

Nabonidus 555–539
 Belshazzar (co-regency) 553–539

When the forces of Nebuchadnezzar finally stormed the city, it was only natural that Jeremiah
was offered by the conquerors a place of honor and a pension in Babylon (since he had
constantly urged the Jews to submit to Nebuchadnezzar as God’s instrument for chastening
them). Yet Jeremiah chose to stay with the remnant of his own people in Palestine and minister
to the bands of guerrillas or partisans who had remained behind after the great deportation to
Babylonia. But after the treacherous murder of Gedaliah by the treacherous Ishmael he was
abducted and carried off to Egypt by the fugitive remnant of the Jews, who preferred to take
refuge in the land of the Nile rather than to remain in Palestine and face the wrath of
Nebuchadnezzar. In Egypt, Jeremiah prophesied for several years longer, and it was probably
there that he died.
By nature, Jeremiah was gentle, tender, and sympathetic; yet he was charged by God to proclaim
a stern message of irreversible gloom. Loving his people with a deep affection, he constantly
found himself the object of hatred, reproached with charges of treason. Although he was
sensitive to the extreme, he was forced to undergo a constant barrage of slander and persecution
that would normally have crushed the most callous spirit. Introspective and retiring by nature, he
was ever thrust into the limelight. Occasionally, he attempted to throw off his prophetic
responsibility as a burden too heavy for him to bear, but again and again he returned to the call of
duty, and by the power of the Lord stood indeed as a “tower of bronze” (1:18).

Jeremiah: History of the Text

There is good evidence to believe that even apart from the original edition of Jeremiah’s
prophecy, which was destroyed by Jehoiakim, there was a later edition which preceded the final
form of the text as we have it in the Masoretic tradition. At least this is a reasonable deduction to
draw from the Greek LXX, since it appears to be about one-eighth shorter than the Hebrew text
of the MT. It differs also in the arrangement of the chapters, for chapters 46–51 of the MT are
placed after chapter 25 in the LXX, and they are arranged in a somewhat different sequence.
Jeremiah 33:14–26 of the MT is altogether missing in the LXX. It would seem that this earlier
edition was published in the prophet’s own lifetime and first disseminated in Egypt. Later, after
Jeremiah’s death, it appears that his secretary, Baruch, made a more comprehensive collection of
his master’s sermons and rearranged the material in more logical order. The MT undoubtedly
preserves this posthumous edition of Baruch. In this connection, note that 36:32 indicates that a
second preliminary edition was published in the reign of Jehoiakim, and it is therefore reasonable
to assume that Jeremiah kept adding to these earlier sermons the messages the Lord gave him in
the reign of Zedekiah and in the period subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem.
The following table is a correlation between the MT and the LXX in order to facilitate
comparison:
MT LXX

1:1–25:13 1:1–25:13

25:14–46:5 32:1–51:35

46:1–51:64 25:14–31:44

Jeremiah: Integrity of the Text

Most rationalist critics deny certain portions of Jeremiah both to Jeremiah himself and to Baruch
his secretary. Passages challenged include (1) 10:1–16, because it warns the Jews in exile against
idolatry in terms reminiscent of Deutero-Isaiah; (2) 17:19–27, because of the emphasis upon
strict Sabbath keeping, which is reminiscent of Ezekiel or the priestly code and therefore a little
too late for Jeremiah; (3) chapters 30 and 31, because of the Messianic expectation which some
critics feel was only characteristic of the post-exilic period and also because of the emphasis
upon individual responsibility in the mood of Ezekiel 18 (the assumption being that this passage
in Jeremiah must have been later than Ezekiel); (4) chapter 51, because in verse 41 Babylon is
spoken of by its Athbash equivalent, “Sheshakh,” and the Athbash is considered a late artificial
device. (Athbash is so called because it is a code in which the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet
indicates the first, the second to the last indicates the second letter; hence the B-b-l of Babel
comes out as Sh-sh-k, or the code name Sheshach in KJV.)
But it should be noted that all these criteria for later dating depend for their validity upon
unproved assumptions such as the post-exilic dating of document P of the Torah and of Isaiah II,
and a supposedly late evolutionary hypothesis as to the development of the messianic hope. It is
difficult of course, to justify any extensive chronological gap between Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
since according to the biblical evidence the two prophets were contemporaneous in their
ministries, at least during the latter part of Jeremiah’s career. There is a very close resemblance
between Jer. 31:29–30 and Ezek. 18:2–3; yet it would appear that what Jeremiah says in passing
is taken up by Ezekiel as a sort of text for an extended sermon.

Jeremiah: Miscellaneous Historical Matters

In regard to Jeremiah’s prediction in 29:10 concerning the seventy years’ captivity, there is some
question as to how the seven decades are to be computed. The main deportation of the population
of Judah did not take place until 586 B.C. In 539, Babylon fell to the Persian conquerors, and
within a year or two the Jewish remnant who chose to return resettled in Judah under the
leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, possibly in 536. Yet only fifty years elapsed between 586
and 536, and so we must look for other termini. Since the first Palestinian invasion of
Nebuchadnezzar took place in 605 B.C., and resulted in the deportation of a considerable number
of hostages (including Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), this date might serve as the
terminus a quo; thus 536 would be approximately seventy years later. Another possibility is to
begin the seventy years at the destruction of the Temple by General Nebuzaradan in 586 and
prolong the captivity until the second temple had been completely rebuilt, which took place in
516. Of these two choices, the latter seems to be very definitely favored by Zech. 1:12: “Then the
angel of the Lord answered and said, O Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on
Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation, these threescore
and ten years?” (ASV). Since this utterance must have been given in 519 B.C., we can only
conclude that, from the standpoint of the angel at least, the seventy years were not yet up; and
that the gracious promise in Jer. 29:10 was not to be fulfilled until the Temple itself was restored.
Until a few decades ago, considerable skepticism was voiced by many critics as to the fulfillment
of the prediction made by Jeremiah in 43:9–13 and 44:30 that northern Egypt would be
devastated by an invasion of the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar (cf. also Ezek. 29:19–20,
which contains a similar prediction). The pagan Greek historians make no mention of such an
invasion, although there is a definite record to be found in Josephus’s Antiquities 10.9.5–7:
“Johanan took those whom he had rescued and came to a certain place called Mandara. On the
fifth year (582/81) after the destruction of Jerusalem, which was the twenty-third (582) of the
reign of Nebuchadnezzar, he made an expedition against Coele-Syria; and when he had
possessed himself of it, he made war against the Ammonites and Moabites; and when he had
brought all those nations under subjection, he fell upon Egypt in order to overthrow it, and he
slew the king that then reigned and set up another; and he took those Jews that were there
captives, and led them away to Babylon; and such was the end of the nation of the Hebrews.”
Many authorities tended to discount this testimony of Josephus as merely manufactured in order
to support the Hebrew Scriptures. But R. Campbell Thompson of Oxford remarks: “The small
fragment of a Babylonian chronicle first published by Pinches shows that Nebuchadnezzar
launched an expedition against Egypt in his thirty-seventh year, i.e., about 567 B.C. … the very
distance to which he penetrated is a matter of dispute.… We might almost assume from the
tradition that certain Babylonian settlers built a ‘Babylon’ in Egypt near the Pyramids, which
appears to have existed as an important fort in the time of Augustus, that his army at all events
left some mark there.” In ANET3 (p. 308) appears a translation of a fragmentary Babylonian text
in the British Museum containing the following sentence: “In the thirty-seventh year (568/67),
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, marched against Mi-sir [Egypt] to deliver a battle.”
Additional archaeological confirmation is found in an inscription on the statue of Nes-hor in the
Louvre. Nes-hor was a governor of southern Egypt under Hophra (Uaḥ-ib-Ra, in Egyptian). In
this biographical record he states that an army of Asiatics and northern peoples who had invaded
Egypt attempted to advance up the Nile valley to Ethiopia, but this was fortunately averted by
the favor of the gods.” In view of this evidence, therefore, it is hardly justifiable to deny any
longer the historicity of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt, or to question that it was a very
serious and devastating incursion.
At this point mention should be made of an important archaeological find unearthed at the site of
the ancient city of Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) which brought to light a file of correspondence
consisting of about twenty-one ostraca dating from the year 588 B.C. They practically all consist
of letters or memoranda written by the captain of a military outpost named Hoshaiah to Ya’ush,
the district commander of the Jewish forces stationed in Lachish during the third Chaldean
invasion. In most of these letters Hoshaiah seems to be defending himself against slanders and
misrepresentations concerning his own loyalty or efficiency. In these communications he refers
to various people or incidents in such an elusive way that we cannot be sure of their full import.
Some scholars have concluded, for example, that a certain prophet mentioned in these letters
might either have been Jeremiah himself, or Urijah, who was extradited from Egypt after uttering
an adverse prophecy against Jehoiakim (cf. Jer. 26:20–23). A further study of the evidence,
however, has led most scholars to conclude that the prophet mentioned in these letters cannot
reliably be identified upon the basis of the data at hand. The most significant light cast upon the
period of Jeremiah by the Lachish correspondence is to be found in the linguistic field. The type
of Hebrew employed in these ostraca bears a very marked similarity to that which appears in the
writings of Jeremiah, and serves to confirm the genuineness of his prophecies as stemming from
the beginning of the sixth century B.C.

Lamentations

The Hebrew title of this relatively short work is the word ˒ēḵâ (“How!”) which appears at the
beginning of 1:1. The theme of the book is a lament over the woes that have befallen sinful
Judah and the pitiable destruction visited upon the holy city and the temple of the Lord. By
implication the prophet appeals to chastened Israel that they recognize the righteousness of
God’s dealings with them, and that in a spirit of repentance they cast themselves once more upon
His mercy.

Outline of Lamentations

I. Jerusalem devastated and forsaken, 1:1–22

II. Reasons for God’s wrath upon the city; repentance its only hope, 2:1–22

III. The city’s lament for its devastation; its repentance at remembrance of God’s former mercies,
3:1–66

IV. Zion’s ancient glory contrasted with her present misery, 4:1–22

V. Repentant nation casts itself upon God’s mercy, 5:1–22

It is interesting to note that the first four chapters are written in the acrostic form. Chapters 1, 2,
and 4 are therefore twenty-two verses long, each verse beginning with the successive letter of the
Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3, however, contains sixty-six verses, since three successive verses are
allotted to each letter of the alphabet.
 Authorship and Composition of Lamentations

The book does not expressly state who its author was, yet there was an early and consistent
tradition that Jeremiah composed it. This tradition is reflected in the title of the book in the LXX
as well as by the Aramaic Targum of Jonathan. The early church Fathers, such as Origen and
Jerome, understood Jeremiah to be the author without any question. Many modern critics,
however, have rejected this tradition on the ground of internal evidence; that is, the style is said
to be significantly different from that of Jeremiah’s prophecies, and two or three historical
allusions have been interpreted as referring to much later conditions or events than Jeremiah’s
time. On the other hand, it is hard to conceive how there could have been a later occasion than
the fall of Jerusalem in 586 to serve as the incentive for the composition of such a tragic
threnody as this. If Jeremiah was not the composer, whoever wrote it must have been a
contemporary of his and witnessed the same pitiless destruction meted out to Zion by its
Chaldean conquerors.
In matters of style and phraseology, there are numerous and striking similarities between
Lamentations and Jeremiah. Many of these have been acknowledged even by S. R. Driver, who
does not accept Jeremiah’s authorship; for instance, “the oppressed virgin daughter of Zion”
(Lam. 1:15; Jer. 8:21); the prophet’s eyes are said to “flow down with tears” (Lam. 1:16a; 2:11;
Jer. 9:1, 18b). Compare “Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her” (Lam. 1:2) with
“All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not” (Jer. 30:14). Both speak of the winecup
of God’s judgment: Lam. 4:21 says of Edom, “The cup shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt
be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked”; Jer. 49:12, “Behold, they whose judgment was not to
drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished?”
The arguments advanced to indicate a difference in viewpoint between the authors of the two
works do not rest upon sound exegesis. Thus it is alleged that unlike Lam. 4:17, Jeremiah did not
expect any help for Judah to come from Egypt. But actually this is a misunderstanding, for Lam.
4:17 makes no specific mention of Egypt at all. Moreover, it does not purport to be the utterance
of the author personally as much as the attitude of the nation as a whole, which the prophet puts
into these words: “As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have
watched for a nation that could not save us.” The author does not imply here that he was
expressing his own political views. Again, it is alleged that whereas Jeremiah regarded the
Babylonians as God’s instruments for punishment of His disobedient nation, Lam. 3:59–66
implies that the Chaldeans were wicked enemies who richly deserved God’s avenging rod. But it
is a mistake to suppose that these two ideas are mutually exclusive. Jeremiah makes it quite
obvious that the Babylonians were used by God for the purposes of chastening, and yet were to
experience His ultimate vengeance because of the evil motives of their own heart. (Cf. Isa. 10 for
a similar treatment of the Assyrians.) We conclude that there are no valid grounds for making out
a difference of authorship based upon a difference in viewpoint.
One final observation ought to be made concerning Lam. 3. The first 18 verses of this chapter
express mournful lamentation and portray God as cruelly severe, but then verses 19–39 abruptly
change to a mood of hope and praise to God for His faithfulness and compassion. This is
certainly the type of “discrepancy” which critics have utilized in other books of the Old
Testament to demonstrate a difference in authorship. In this particular chapter, however, no
theory of multiple sources is possible, for the whole composition is firmly and inescapably
locked together by the acrostic pattern in which it is written. Hence this chapter may be taken as
irrefutable proof that it was possible for an ancient Hebrew author quite suddenly to shift from
one mood to another and express sentiments that markedly contrast with each other (even though
they are not actually contradictory).

27
Ezekiel
THE HEBREW NAME Yeḥezeqe˒l means “God strengthens.” The theme of Ezekiel’s prophecy is
that the fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity are necessary measures for the God of
grace to employ if He is to correct His disobedient people and draw them back from complete
and permanent apostasy. But the day is coming when Jehovah will restore a repentant remnant of
His chastened people and establish them in a glorious latter-day theocracy with a new temple.

Outline of Ezekiel

I. The prophet’s call and commission, 1:1–3:27

A. The vision of the glory of the Lord 1:1–28
B. God’s commission to preach warning and doom 2:1–10
C. The scroll of condemnation upon the apostate nation for their lack of repentance 3:1–27
II. Prophecies against Judah prior to the fall of Jerusalem, 4:1–24:27
A. Messages of the fifth year (593–592 B.C.), 4:1–7:27 (destruction predicted by sign,
symbol, and sentence)
B. Messages of the sixth year (592–591 B.C.), 8:1–19:14
1. Vision of Jerusalem’s idolatry and punishment, 8:1–11:25
2. Punishment necessary because of its universal corruption, 12:1–19:14
C. Messages of the seventh year (591–590 B.C.), 20:1–23:49
1. Israel’s ingratitude since the Exodus; Nebuchadnezzar will turn to besiege Jerusalem;
no more Davidic kings until Christ Himself, 20:1–21:32
2. A catalogue of the sins of adulterous Samaria and Judah, 22:1–23:49
D. Message of the ninth year (589–588 B.C.), 24:1–27
No mourning for Ezekiel’s wife or for Jehovah’s fallen Israel
III. Prophecies against the heathen nations, 25:1–32:32
A. Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia (nearest neighbors), 25:1–17
B. Tyre and Sidon, symbols of proud commercial materialism, 26:1–28:26
C. Egypt, the symbol of self-confident idolatry, 29:1–32:32
IV. Prophecies of reconstruction and restoration after the fall, 33:1–48:35
A. Stages of preparation for the new kingdom, 33:1–39:29
 1. Responsibility of the prophet and people; warning and purgation, 33:1–33
2. False shepherds will give way to the true Shepherd, 34:1–31
3. The return and revival of captive Israel, after Edom’s destruction; the valley of Dry
Bones 35:1–37:28
4. Destruction of the godless nations (Gog and others) in the last days, 38:1–39:29
B. The final kingdom and latter-day temple, 40:1–48:35
1. Millennial temple, 40:1–43:27
2. Millennial worship, 44:1–46:24
3. Millennial land and the river of blessing, 47:1–48:35

Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel was of a priestly family. His father’s name was Buzi, and he was
sufficiently high in rank to warrant inclusion among the hostages whom Nebuchadnezzar took
with him to Babylon in 597 B.C. He was settled in a community near Nippur (about fifty miles
south of Babylon on the Euphrates River) called Tell-Abib on the Grand Canal (which would be
a more accurate translation of “the river Chebar”). This canal, the Naru Kabari of the cuneiform
inscriptions, ran from the Euphrates above Babylon sixty miles in a southeasterly direction to
Nippur, rejoining the Euphrates below Ur and irrigating the alluvial plain between the Euphrates
and the Tigris. Ezekiel was called to his prophetic ministry in 592 B.C. (the fifth year of the
captivity of King Jehoiachin) when he himself was about thirty years of age (1:1). His happy
marriage was terminated by the death of his wife in 587 (chap. 24). He became a noted preacher
among the exiled Jews in Babylonia and was often resorted to both by the elders and the
common people, although without much practical response to his message. His last dated
discourse (29:17–21) was in the twenty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, or 570 B.C.

Critical Objections to the Genuineness of Ezekiel

As recently as the eighth edition of Driver’s ILOT, the genuineness of Ezekiel had been accepted
as completely authentic by the majority of rationalist critics. But in 1924 Gustav Hoelscher
advanced the thesis that only a small fraction of the book was by the historical sixth-century
Ezekiel (i.e., only 143 verses out of 1273) and the rest came from some later author living in
Jerusalem and contemporaneous with Nehemiah (440–430 B.C.). In 1930 Professor C. C. Torrey
published a discussion of his view that no part of Ezekiel came from the sixth century, or even
from the two centuries succeeding. He dated the earliest stratum of the book of Ezekiel at 230
B.C. and deduced that it was written in Jerusalem rather than Babylonia. Not long afterward it
was reedited by a redactor who gave it the appearance of having been written in Babylonia by
one of the Captivity. It should be mentioned that Torrey did not believe in the historicity of the
Chaldean destruction of Judah or the removal of the Jewish population to Babylonia in any sort
of national captivity. Few scholars, however, have followed him in this skepticism, and in more
recent years the cumulative data of Palestinian archaeology (as interpreted, e.g., by W. R
Albright) point to a complete cessation of Israelite occupation in Palestine during the greater part
of the sixth century. G. A. Cooke, who put out the ICC volume on Ezekiel in 1937, still adhered
to the view that the historic Ezekiel was the basic author of the book, for he felt it would be just
as hard to believe in the supposed late redactor as it would be to accept at face value the
statements of the text itself. Nevertheless, the more recent trend in Liberal circles is to deny the
genuineness of Ezekiel and to insist that it was really composed in Palestine some time after the
restoration from exile. Thus N. Messel in 1945 ventured to date the work at about 400 B.C.
Bentzen declared, “The book as it now stands is no authentic work of the prophet Ezekiel.”
Two main grounds have been advanced for the denial of this book to the sixth-century prophet
Ezekiel.
1. The prophet who pronounced doom upon Israel could not possibly be the same as the one who
held forth heartening promises of future blessing. In other words, the historic Ezekiel must have
been a preacher of darkness and doom and afforded his nation no ray of light or hope. But it
should be pointed out that nearly all the Old Testament prophets who foretell catastrophic
judgment also predict subsequent restoration and the ultimate bestowal of covenant grace on the
chastened nation of Israel. This observation applies to Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and
Jeremiah, just to name a few of the outstanding examples. Even Nahum speaks of eventual
deliverance and triumph for Israel (2:2) and the destruction of her foes (1:15). The same is true in
Zeph. 3:14–20. Only by a rigid dogmatism can these various Old Testament prophets be carved
up into different sources and thus preserve the hypothesis that the threatener can only threaten
and the promiser can only promise. Even Hugo Gressmann was led by an extensive study of
these prophets to this conclusion: “World renewal necessarily follows upon world catastrophe.”
2. It is alleged that the author of Ezekiel betrays a Palestinian viewpoint rather than that of an
author writing in Babylonia. For example, Ezekiel is portrayed as enacting symbolic prophecies
for the benefit of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which of course they could not have witnessed
had he been living in the land of the Chaldeans more than a thousand miles away. In answer to
this it should be pointed out that there is no hint or suggestion in the text of Ezekiel itself that the
prophet performed his symbolic actions in the presence of Jerusalemites actually living in
Jerusalem. On the contrary, it indicates that his audience was composed of citizens of Jerusalem
who shared exile with him in Tell Abib, Babylonia. In 2 Kings 24:14 we read that when King
Jehoiachin was taken into captivity in 597 B.C. with his princes and “mighty men of valor,” the
number of captives deported to Babylon (including the craftsmen and skilled workers) numbered
no less than ten thousand. Since the great majority of these must have been residents of
Jerusalem, there is no difficulty in supposing that Ezekiel had a very considerable audience of
Jerusalemites to whom he might preach, right there in Tel Abib by the Chebar.
Second, it is objected that the author betrays an eyewitness knowledge of such events as took
place in Jerusalem itself and which could have been witnessed only by actual bystanders. Thus in
chapter 8 the author describes the idolatrous worship of the elders in the Jerusalem temple; in
11:13 he refers to the sudden death of one of their number (Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah). In
12:3–12, he refers to Zedekiah’s attempt to escape from Jerusalem by night; in 21:18 he depicts
Nebuchadnezzar consulting omens at a crossroads on the way to Jerusalem; and in 24:2 he refers
to his encampment outside the city walls. The only reasonable conclusion to draw, according to
these critics, is that the author lived in Jerusalem in the last years before the final destruction of
587 B.C. (Most advocates of this theory, however, make the author subsequent to the Exile and
understand his work as a mere fictional account pieced together from oral tradition.)
Yet it should be noted that many of these references in Ezekiel are perfectly compatible with the
supposition that tidings of the events related might have had opportunity to get to the exiles in
Babylon by the time the author wrote what he did. In other cases, an introductory statement is
given (e.g., in chap. 8) that what the author relates consists of a vision supernaturally imparted to
him by the Lord. Only on the basis of antisupernaturalistic presuppositions can the factor of
divine revelation be ruled out as an explanation of how Ezekiel could have had such an exact
knowledge of what was going on in the Lord’s house back in his native land. Nor can it be
successfully maintained that even the assumption of an author living in Jerusalem can
satisfactorily explain all the material contained in the text, for some of these visions are
obviously of supernatural origin. This is preeminently the case with the vision of the departure of
the shekinah glory of the Lord from the temple as set forth in 10:4 and 11:23. Only upon the
supposition that Jehovah miraculously conveyed these scenes to His prophet in the form of a
spiritual vision can these passages in Ezekiel be intelligently understood.

Discrepancies Between Ezekiel and the Priestly Code

Reference has been made in chapter 12 to the role assigned by the Wellhausen school to the
sixth-century prophet Ezekiel in laying the foundation for the work of the priestly school. To him
or his immediate disciples were attributed the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26) and the first stages of
a new doctrine that the priesthood should be confined to the descendants of Aaron rather than
allowed to the tribe of Levi as a whole (cf. Ezek. 44:7–16, which assigns a privileged status to
the family of Zadok). But the advocates of this school insisted that document P could not have
been in existence before Ezekiel’s time; otherwise he would not have ventured to prescribe
regulations which markedly differ from those laid down in the Priestly Code. As a matter of fact,
there are striking divergences in three general areas: temple dimensions, temple furniture, and
the ritual of sacrificial worship. It was for this reason, of course, that some of the ancient Jewish
authorities, especially those connected with the school of Shammai, entertained doubts as to the
canonicity of Ezekiel—overlooking the possibility that the temple regulations in chapters 40–48
were not intended to be implemented in the period of the old covenant, but rather in the final
kingdom of the messianic age.
It should be observed that the theory of post-exilic origin for the Priestly Code does not really
furnish an adequate explanation for the divergences just referred to. It is an undeniable fact that
the provisions in Ezekiel differ just as much from document D, and even document H, as they do
from P. For example, there is absolutely no mention in Ezekiel of the tithes and gifts which are to
be presented for the firstborn (such as are prescribed in D and E), nor of the Feast of Pentecost
and the regulations pertaining to it, nor of such particular provisions as the avoidance of
ascending by steps to an altar. Since all these matters just mentioned are included in
Deuteronomy, the same type of logic which makes Ezekiel earlier than P would compel us to
make him earlier than D as well. It is noteworthy that Ezekiel presupposes the same general
system for sacrificial worship as that set forth in P: burnt offerings, sin offerings, peace offerings,
and a clear distinction between the ritually clean and unclean. All these regulations are set forth
with the implication that this sacrificial system was well known to its readers and had been
practiced from ancient times.
Perhaps the most striking evidence along this line is that the temple dimensions given in the last
part of Ezekiel differ not only from those in the Priestly Code but also those of the Solomonic
temple as described in 1 Kings 6–7. If Ezekiel’s divergence indicates earlier authorship, then a
consistent application of this criterion would compel us to understand Ezekiel as earlier than the
erection of the Solomonic temple. Here again then we must acknowledge that this whole line of
reasoning leads to ridiculous results and cannot be adhered to as a serviceable criterion for
comparative dating.
Another type of divergence which the post-exilic date for P does not explain is found in
Ezekiel’s vision of the apportionment of the Holy Land among the twelve tribes during the
millennial kingdom. As the metes and bounds are given in chapter 48, a geography somewhat
different from that which presently exists in Palestine seems to be quite definitely implied. Quite
significant extension of the northern tribes into the eastern area beyond the Jordan River seems
to be clearly involved (for Dan, Asher, and Naphtali—which includes Damascus and points
east). Manasseh and Ephraim likewise extend as far as the Syrian Desert. Below the Sea of
Galilee comes Reuben (on the west of the Jordan). Then Judah forms a box above the Jerusalem
enclave from the west coast to the Jordan, Benjamin, Simeon, and Issachar all stretch from the
coast to the Dead Sea. Below them Issachar, Zebulun and Gad have similar horizontal strips
from the Wadi el ’Aris to the Edomite border. This new distribution of tribal territories differs
quite markedly from that which was allotted each tribe under Joshua.
Since Ezekiel had been brought up in Judah and must have been thoroughly familiar with the lay
of the land in his own generation, he could not have been speaking of an apportionment to be
enacted in the near future. He must have had reference to a new state of affairs to be ushered in
at the end time. If this is true in regard to geography, there seems to be no reason why it may not
also apply to the cultus itself.

Problem of the Fulfillment of Ezekiel 40–48

These chapters contain a long and detailed series of predictions of what the future Palestine is to
be like, with its city and temple. To an open-minded reader, it is safe to say the predictions of
these nine chapters give the appearance of being as literally intended as those contained in the
earlier part of the book (e.g., the judgments upon Tyre and Sidon in 26–28, which found literal
fulfillment in subsequent history). The question is whether the plans set forth in chapters 40–48
are ever to be realized. If no temple is ever going to be erected in accordance with these
specifications, and if there is to be no such holy city as the prophet describes, and if there is to be
no such apportionment of the land among the twelve tribes as he indicates, we are faced with a
portion of Scripture containing false prophecy.
The only way to avoid this conclusion, according to many interpreters, is to understand all these
provisions as intended in a purely figurative way. These chapters should be understood as
referring to the New Testament church, the spiritual Jerusalem: This line of interpretation is
widely held even by scholars of undoubted orthodoxy. In the New Bible Commentary we read,
“The conclusion of Ezekiel’s prophecy, therefore, is to be regarded as a true prediction of the
kingdom of God given under forms with which the prophet was familiar, viz., those of his own
(Jewish) dispensation. Their essential truth will be embodied in the new age under forms suitable
to the new (Christian) dispensation. How this is to be done is outlined for us in the book of
Revelation (21:1–22:5).”
The application of Ezek. 40–48 to the New Testament church side-steps some of the difficulties
attendant upon a more literalistic interpretation. This is especially true of the regulations for
blood sacrifice which appear in these chapters and which can hardly be fitted into a post-Calvary
economy of salvation, if the sacrifices themselves retain their atoning significance (with which of
course they were invested in the law of Moses). In the Epistle to the Hebrews, such passages as
10:4 make it clear that no more animal sacrifices are necessary or efficacious for the atonement
of sin. Hebrews announces that the one atoning deed of the Lord Jesus has a permanent efficacy
which does away with the Old Testament priesthood of Aaron and the sacrifices of the Levitical
code. As H. L. Ellison puts it in Ezekiel, the Man and His Message, “In addition they [the
opponents of the literalistic interpretation] cannot see why, when water, bread and wine have met
the symbolic needs of nearly a thousand generations of Christians, the millennium will need
more. The King has returned and the curse on nature has been lifted; why should the animal
creation still lay down its life?” It cannot be denied that this is a persuasive line of reasoning, and
it is not surprising that a great majority of Conservative scholars are content to dismiss Ezekiel’s
temple as a mere allegory of the Christian church.
It nevertheless remains true that this matter cannot be so easily disposed of, for the stubborn fact
still remains that we have here eight or nine chapters of prophetic Scripture which assure
believers that God has a definite plan in the future for Jerusalem, the Temple, and Palestine, all
of which give definite and precise measurements and bounds for the temple buildings and
precincts and for the division of the tribal territories of the Promised Land. It is also true that the
passages referred to in the book of Revelation provide rather dubious support for identification of
Ezekiel’s temple with the church age. Thus in Rev. 21:22, we learn that in the New Jerusalem
there is to be no temple at all, and this appears to be a rather startling type of fulfillment for four
chapters (Ezek. 40–43) which describe the future temple in great detail, especially in view of the
fact that Ezekiel makes a clear separation between the temple and the city (48:8, 15).
A similarity has been pointed out between the symbolic river in Ezekiel and that in Rev. 22:1,
but it should be noted that the river of John’s vision flows from beneath the throne of God and of
the Lamb, whereas the river in Ezek. 47:1 flows from the threshold of the temple. Undeniably
there is a relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament passages involved, but
it seems to be a relationship of the intermediate or typical to the consummate and eternal. In
other words, the future millennial kingdom is to be a provisional economy which prepare the
way for the new heavens and the new earth announced in Rev. 21 and 22.
It is quite significant that even some who hold that the New Testament church is the fulfillment
of Ezekiel’s temple feel hesitant to affirm that the church is what Ezekiel had in mind as he
composed these chapters. In the New Bible Commentary article referred to above, on page 663
we read: “Ezekiel has advanced plans which he expected to be carried out to the letter. To make
them a deliberately symbolic description of the worship of the Christian Church is out of the
question.” This comment of course raises the question, was Ezekiel mistaken in his expectation?
If these plans of the temple and Holy City were of his own devising, it is perhaps conceivable
that he could have been in error (although such error could hardly have become part of Holy
Scripture). But the prophet makes it abundantly plain that he did not devise these plans himself,
they were revealed to him by the angel of the Lord who showed him the splendors of the
completed temple precinct and measured for him all its metes and bounds. If then there was a
mistake in expectation, it must have been shared by the angel of the Lord (unless, of course,
Ezekiel has not given us a trustworthy account).
In view of the foregoing considerations, the present writer has come to the view that a
moderately literal interpretation of these chapters is attended by less serious difficulties than a
figurative interpretation. Much caution should be exercised in pressing details, but in the broad
outline it may be reasonably deduced that in a coming age all the promises conveyed by the
angel to Ezekiel will be fulfilled in the glorious earthly kingdom with which the drama of
redemption is destined to close. The sacrificial offerings mentioned in these chapters are to be
understood as devoid of propitiatory or atoning character, since Christ’s sacrifice provided an
atonement which was sufficient for all time (Heb. 10:12). Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus ordained
the sacrament of holy communion as an ordinance to be practiced even after His crucifixion, and
He specified that it was to be observed until His second coming (1 Cor. 11:26: “till he come”).
By premillennial definition, the Millennium is to follow His second advent. If, then, there was a
sacramental form practiced during the church age, why should there not be a new form of
sacrament carried on during the Millennium itself.?
We in this age are hardly more competent to judge concerning the new requirements and
conditions of the future millennial kingdom than were Old Testament believers competent to
judge concerning the new forms and conditions which were to be ushered in in the New
Testament age after Christ’s first advent.
It should be added that some writers on this subject have introduced questionable precision of
detail in their interpretation of what the millennial kingdom will be like, such as the exclusive
Jewishness of the citizenry, or the supremacy of the Hebrew race as an ethnic unit over all the
nations of the earth. Yet there are many indications in the Old Testament prophets that Jewish
and Gentile believers shall be incorporated into one body politic in the coming age. For example,
we find it clearly implied in Isa. 11:10–12 that both the Hebrew ˓am (“people,” KJV) and the
Gentile gōyɩ̂ m (“Gentiles,” KJV) will be included under the rule of the same Messiah and enjoy
equal standing before Him. The symbol of the good olive tree in Rom. 11 seems to indicate that
all Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile in background, are brought into organic relationship as
members of the same body, and there is a suggestion that this condition will continue even in the
end time (cf. Gal. 6:16, which seems to speak of the Church as the Israel of God).
For these reasons, the sharp dichotomy maintained between Israel and the church by Unger
seems very difficult to maintain. However, it should be recognized that a belief in the millennial
fulfillment of Ezek. 40–48 does not necessarily involve any clear separation between Jewish and
Gentile believers, nor does it require any identification between the “prince” (nāsɩ̂ ˒) or “ruler” of
the latter-day commonwealth mentioned in these chapters (44:3; 46:2; etc.) and the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is far more likely that this “prince” is to be understood as a vice-
regent, ruling under the authority of the Messiah (whose empire, of course, will extend to all the
nations of the earth).
It is highly significant that recent evangelical commentaries, such as that by F. F. Bruce in The
New Layman’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1979, pp. 894–99) and by Ralph Alexander in
Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. VI (Zondervan, 1986, pp. 942–96) both give serious
attention to all the particulars of this Millennial Temple and Holy Land as a sure prophecy
certain of future fulfillment. Alexander has this to say about the sacrifices to be maintained
during this final stage of history (prior to the lowering of heaven to earth in the New Jerusalem):
“The sacrifices in the millennial sacrificial system appear to be only memorials of Christ’s
finished work and pictorial reminders that mankind by nature is sinful and in need of redemption
from sin. The very observances of the Lord’s Table is an argument in favor of this memorial
view. The Lord’s Table is itself a memorial of Christ’s death.” (EBC, 6:951).
 28
Daniel
THE NAME DANIEL in Hebrew is Dāniyyē˒l, which means either “God is judge” or “God is my
Judge” (depending upon the force of the medial -iy-). The basic theme of this work is the
overruling sovereignty of the one true God, who condemns and destroys the rebellious world
power and faithfully delivers His covenant people according to their steadfast faith in Him.

Outline of Daniel

I. Training and testing of the remnant, 1:1–21

A. Captivity of the hostages by Nebuchadnezzar, 1:1–2
B. Training of the Jewish youths for the king’s service, 1:3–7
C. Daniel’s first test of obedience, his challenge of faith, 1:8–16
D. Consequent reward: attainment in wisdom, promotion in position, 1:17–21
II. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and God’s plan for the ages, 2:1–49
A. Enigma of the dream beyond the wisdom of this world, 2:1–13
B. Daniel’s undertaking to interpret it, and his prayer for God’s revelation, 2:14–23
C. Daniel’s recall and interpretation of the dream, 2:24–45
D. Resultant glory to God and the promotion of Daniel, 2:46–49
III. Golden image and the fiery furnace, 3:1–30
A. Erection of the image and compulsory state religion, 3:1–7
B. Accusation and trial of the steadfast three, 3:8–18
C. Execution of the sentence, 3:19–23
D. God’s miracle of deliverance and the Fourth Man, 3:24–27
E. Nebuchadnezzar’s second submission to God, 3:28–30
IV. Nebuchadnezzar’s warning dream and subsequent humbling, 4:1–37
A. The alarming dream, unexplained by worldly wisdom, 4:1–7
B. Daniel’s recognition as interpreter of dreams, 4:8–18
C. Daniel’s interpretation and warning to the proud king, 4:19–27
D. The king’s great humiliation, in seven years of dementia 4:28–33
E. The king’s repentance and acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty, 4:34–37
V. Belshazzar’s feast: God’s judgment upon the profanation of holy items, 5:1–31
A. Belshazzar’s arrogant misuse of the holy vessels of God, 5:1–4
B. Handwriting on the wall and the king’s terror, 5:5–9
C. Request of the helpless world ruler to the man of God, 5:10–16
D. Judgment of God against the proud king: the pronouncement of doom, 5:17–28
E. The honoring of Daniel and the slaying of Belshazzar, 5:29–31
VI. In the lion’s den: the believer’s preservation against the malice of the world, 6:1–28
A. Conspiracy of envy: the decree forbidding all prayer except to Darius, 6:1–9
 B. Daniel’s detection at prayer and the enforcement of the decree, 6:10–17
C. His miraculous deliverance and the punishment of his foes, 6:18–24
D. Darius’ testimony to God’s sovereignty, 6:25–28
VII. Triumph of the Son of man, 7:1–28
A. The beasts (lion of Babylon, bear of Medo-Persia, leopard of Greece, the terrible beast of
Rome), 7:1–8 (the little horn of v. 8 and 20 referring to the Beast)
B. Kingdom of God and Messiah’s enthronement, 7:9–14
C. Angel’s interpretation of the dream to Daniel, 7:15–28
VIII. Conquest of Persia by Greece and the rise of Antiochus Epiphanes, 8:1–27
A. The vision of the ram, the he-goat, and the little horn (Antiochus), 8:1–12
B. The interpretation of the vision by Gabriel, 8:13–27
IX. Vision of the seventy weeks, God’s perfect plan for Israel, 9:1–27
A. Daniel’s persistent, promise-based prayer, 9:1–19
B. Gabriel’s appearance with the answer: seventy heptads of years for Israel, 9:20–27 (an
accurate prediction of the interval between the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem and the
messianic mission of Christ)
X. Triumph of persistent prayer, 10:1–21
A. Angel’s appearance with the answer to Daniel’s queries, despite satanic opposition, 10:1–
14
B. Angel’s encouragement of Daniel, promising further revelation, 10:15–21
XI. Prototribulation under Antiochus, typical of the final tribulation, 11:1–45
A. From the Persian empire to the death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C., 11:1–4
B. Wars between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires up to 168 B.C., 11:5–20
C. Persecution of Israel by Antiochus IV, 11:21–39
D. The analogous war of the antitype of Antiochus in the last days, 11:40–45
XII. Tribulation and final triumph of God’s people, 12:1–13
A. The Great Tribulation, 12:1
B. Resurrection and judgment, 12:2–3
C. Sealing of these prophecies for future fulfillment, 12:4
D. Angels and the man clothed in linen: prediction of three and a half years, 12:5–7
E. Final commission to Daniel; the 1290 days and the 1335 days, 12:8–13

Despite the numerous objections which have been advanced by scholars who regard this as a
prophecy written after the event, there is no good reason for denying the sixth-century Daniel the
composition of the entire work. This represents a collection of his memoirs made at the end of a
long and eventful career which included government service from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar
in the 590s to the reign of Cyrus the Great in the 530s. The appearance of Persian technical terms
indicates a final recension of these memoirs at a time when Persian terminology had already
infiltrated into the vocabulary of Aramaic. The most likely date for the final edition of the book,
therefore, would be about 530 B.C., nine years after the Persian conquest of Babylon.

Daniel: Theory of a Maccabean Pseudepigraph

The great majority of critics regard this book as entirely spurious and composed centuries after
the death of the sixth-century Daniel. They understand it to be a work of historical fiction
composed about 167 B.C. and intended to encourage the resistance movement against the tyranny
of Antiochus Epiphanes. There are a good many scholars, however, who are not completely
satisfied with the Maccabean date for the earlier chapters in Daniel. Many, like Eichhorn (in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), Meinhold, Bertholdt, and (in the twentieth
century) Sellin, Hoelscher, and Noth have held that chapters 2–6 (some would include chap. 7)
originated in the third century B.C. This multiple-source theory of Daniel will be examined later
in this chapter. The arguments for dating the composition of this book in the Greek period may
be divided into four general headings: the historical, the literary or linguistic, the theological, and
the exegetical.

Historical Arguments for the Late Date of Daniel

1. The Jewish canon places Daniel among the Kethubhim or Hagiographa, rather than among the
prophets. This is interpreted to mean that the book must have been written later than all the
canonical prophets, even the post-exilic Malachi and “Trito-Isaiah.” But it should be noted that
some of the documents in the Kethubhim (the third division of the Hebrew Bible) were of great
antiquity, such as the book of Job, the Davidic psalms, and the writings of Solomon. Position in
the Kethubhim, therefore, is no proof of a late date of composition. Furthermore the statement in
Josephus (Contra Apionem. 1.8) quoted previously in chapter 5 indicates strongly that in the first
century A.D., Daniel was included among the prophets in the second division of the Old
Testament canon; hence it could not have been assigned to the Kethubim until a later period. The
Masoretes may have been influenced in this reassignment by the consideration that Daniel was
not appointed or ordained as a prophet, but remained a civil servant under the prevailing
government throughout his entire career. Second, a large percentage of his writings does not bear
the character of prophecy, but rather of history (chaps. 1–6), such as does not appear in any of
the books of the canonical prophets. Little of that which Daniel wrote is couched in the form of a
message from God to His people relayed through the mouth of His spokesman. Rather, the
predominating element consists of prophetic visions granted personally to the author and
interpreted to him by angels. (Here a comparison may be drawn with Zechariah, which likewise
features a series of visions. But in Zechariah far more emphasis is laid upon God’s
communicating His message to Israel through a prophetic mouthpiece.) It was probably because
of the mixed character of this book, partaking partly of historical narratives and partly of
prophetic vision, that the later Jewish scribes relegated it to the third or miscellaneous category
in the canon.
2. It has been pointed out that Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) makes no mention of Daniel even
though he refers to all the other prophets (in 170 B.C.). But it should be noted that other
important authors like Ezra received no mention earlier. (Nor for that matter did he make
mention of such key figures in Hebrew history as Job, or any of the Judges except Samuel, Asa,
Jehoshaphat, and Mordecai. How can such omissions furnish any solid ground for the idea that
these leaders were unknown to Jesus ben Sirach? See ZPEB ii 19A.) Critics have also pointed to
ben Sirach’s statement that there never was a man who was like unto Joseph; and yet, it is
alleged, Daniel’s career greatly resembled that of Joseph. Note, however, that in none of the
particulars specified did Daniel resemble Joseph: “Neither was there a man born like unto
Joseph, a governor of his brethren, a stay of the people, whose bones were regarded of the Lord”
(Ecclus 49:15).
3. It has been alleged that such historical inaccuracies occur in Daniel as to render it likely that
the author lived much later than the events he describes. For example, in Daniel 1:1, it is stated
that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Palestine in the third year of Jehoiakim, whereas Jer. 46:2 says that
the first year of Nebuchadnezzar was the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Since the Chaldean conqueror
became king upon his father’s death in the year that he invaded Judah, there is a discrepancy of
one year between Daniel and Jeremiah. More recent investigation, however, has shown that the
Jews reckoned their regnal year from the first month preceding the year of accession (reckoning
the year as commencing in the month of Tishri, or the seventh month of the religious calendar).
This would mean that 605 B.C. would have been the fourth year of Jehoiakim who came to the
throne in 608. The Babylonians, however, reckoned the first regnal year from the next
succeeding New Year’s Day, that is, from the first of Nisan (the first month of the Hebrew
religious calendar).Therefore, the year 605 would be only Jehoiakim’s third year according to the
Chaldean reckoning. Thus in D. J. Wiseman’s Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings (1956), it is
stated that Nebuchadnezzar’s first regnal year began in April 604, even though he had been
crowned in September 605.
4. Critics point to the fact that one class of wise men or soothsayers in the book of Daniel is
referred to as the “Chaldeans” (Kasdɩ̂ m). They allege that this ethnic term for Nebuchadnezzar’s
race could not have become specialized to indicate a class of soothsayers until a much later time.
In Nebuchadnezzar’s own time it surely would have carried only a racial connotation. This
indicates that the author of Daniel must have written at a time long after the Neo-Babylonian
empire had collapsed and had become an almost forgotten memory. This theory, however, fails
to fit the data of the text, for the author of this work was certainly aware that Kasdɩ̂ m was the
ethnic term for the race of Nebuchadnezzar. Thus in Dan. 5:30 Belshazzar is referred to as “the
king of the Chaldeans”; in this case the term certainly could not refer to any class of wise men.
Even in 3:8 the accusation against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego brought by certain
“Chaldean men” seems to refer to high government officials who appear to be “Chaldean by
race” (so Brown, Driver, and Briggs, p. 1098), which classifies these officials as Chaldean by
race, which means “Chaldean” was used in two senses in this book. Chaldean did not only mean
“soothsayer/priest,” but also can indicate a specific race of people. Therefore, the theory of late
origin fails to explain the facts as we have them. We must look to other explanations for this
twofold use of Kasdɩ̂ m. Herodotus (vol. 1, sec. 181–83) refers to the Chaldeans in such a way as
to imply that they were speedily put into all the politically strategic offices of Babylonia as soon
as they had gained control of the capital. If this was the case, then “Chaldean” may have early
come into use as a term for the priests of Bel-Marduk.
Another suggestion has been offered by R. D. Wilson (Studies in the Book of Daniel, series one)
to the effect that the Akkadian Kasdu or Kaldu, referring to a type of priest, was derived from an
old Sumerian title Gal-du (meaning “master builder”), a term alluding to the building of
astronomical charts which were used as an aid to astrological prediction. Wilson cites such a use
of Gal-du in a tablet from the fourteenth year of Shamash-shumukin of Babylon (668–648 B.C.).
It should be noted that a good many Sumerian titles have been found which contain the element
Gal (“great one, chief, master”). On a single page in Jacobsen’s Copenhagen Texts (p. 3) we find
these titles: Gal-LU KUR, Gal-UKU, Gal-DAN-QAR, and Gal-SUKKAL. The resemblance
between this Gal-du or Kaldu and the ethnic term Kaldu as a by-form of Kasdu would be purely
accidental. Such an explanation clears up the divergent usages of this term by the author of
Daniel. In 3:8, the accusation against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is brought by certain
“Chaldean men,” who are probably high government officials.
5. The appearance of King Belshazzar in chapter 5 was interpreted by earlier critics to be
unhistorical, inasmuch as Nabonidus was known to be the last king of the Chaldean empire.
Later discoveries of cuneiform tablets referring to Belshazzar as “the son of the king” serve to
discredit that criticism almost completely (one tablet from the twelfth year of Nabonidus calls for
oaths in the names of both Nabonidus and Belshazzar [mar šarri]). Nevertheless it is still
objected that Belshazzar is referred to in chapter 5 as a son of Nebuchadnezzar, whereas his
father was actually Nabonidus (Nabuna˒id) who reigned until the fall of Babylon in 539. It is
alleged that only a later author would have supposed that he was Nebuchadnezzar’s son. This
argument, however, overlooks the fact that by ancient usage the term son often referred to a
successor in the same office whether or not there was a blood relationship. Thus in the Egyptian
story, “King Cheops and the Magicians” (preserved in the Papyrus Westcar from the Hyksos
Period), Prince Khephren says to King Khufu (Cheops), “I relate to thy Majesty a wonder that
came to pass in the time of thy father, King Neb-ka.” Actually Neb-ka belonged to the Third
Dynasty, a full century before the time of Khufu in the Fourth Dynasty. In Assyria a similar
practice was reflected in the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which refers to King Jehu (the
exterminator of the whole dynasty of Omri) as “the son of Omri.” Moreover, it is a distinct
possibility that in this case there was an actual genetic relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and
Belshazzar. If Nabonidus married a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar in order to legitimize his
usurpation of the throne back in 556 B.C., it would follow that his son by her would be the
grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. The word for “father” (˒ab or ˒abbā˒) could also mean grandfather
(see Gen. 28:13; 32:10; in 1 Kings 15:13 it means “great grandfather”).
There is fairly conclusive evidence that Belshazzar was elevated to secondary kingship (mar
šarri, “son of the king”) during his father’s lifetime (just as Jotham had been during the lifetime
of his father, Uzziah, in the kingdom of Judah—a common practice in ancient times in order to
secure a peaceful succession). Recent archaeological discoveries indicate that Belshazzar was in
charge of the northern frontier of the Babylonian empire while his father Nabonidus maintained
his headquarters at Teman in North Arabia. Among the discoveries the site of Ur is an inscription
of Nabunaid, dated 530 B.C., containing a prayer for Nabunaid himself followed by a second
prayer for his firstborn son, Bel-shar-usur (Belshazzar)—such prayers being customarily offered
only for the reigning monarch. Among the discoveries at the site of Ur is an inscription of
Nabonidus, dated 543 B.C., containing a prayer for Nabonidus and Belshazzar (mar šarri—“son
of the king”) followed by a second prayer for his firstborn son, Bel-šar-uṣur (Belshazzar)—such
prayers being customarily offered only for the reigning monarch. Still other cuneiform
documents attest that Belshazzar presented sheep and oxen at the temples in Sippar as “an
offering of the king.” The fact that by the time of Herodotus (ca. 450 B.C.) the very name of
Belshazzar had been forgotten, at least so far as the informants of the Greek historian were
concerned, indicates a far closer acquaintance with the events of the late sixth century on the part
of the author of Daniel than would have been the case by the second century B.C.
There is an additional detail in this account that makes the theory of late authorship very difficult
to maintain, and that is that the writer of chapter 5 quotes Belshazzar as promising to the
interpreter of the inscription on the wall promotion to the status of third ruler in the kingdom
(5:16). Why could he only promise the third and not the second? Obviously because Belshazzar
himself was only the second ruler, inasmuch as Nabonidus his father was still alive.
6. It is alleged that the figure of “Darius the Mede” is an evidence of historical confusion. It is
supposed that the author must have confused him with Darius the son of Hystaspes, who was the
third successor after King Cyrus, and who was really a Persian instead of a Mede. But this
interpretation is impossible to defend in the light of the internal evidence of the text itself. No
explanation can be found for calling Darius the son of Hystaspes a Mede, when he was known to
be the descendant of an ancient Achaemenid royal line. The author asserts that Darius the Mede
was sixty-two years old when he assumed the rule in Babylonia, yet it was well known to the
ancients that Darius the Great was a relatively young man when he commenced his reign in 522.
In Dan. 9:1 it is asserted that Darius the Mede was made king (homlak) over the realm of the
Chaldeans. This term indicates that he was invested with the kingship by some higher authority
than himself, which well agrees with the supposition that he was installed as viceroy in
Babylonia by Cyrus the Great. Similarly, in Dan. 5:31 we are told that Darius “received”
(qabbēl) the “kingdom” (malkūtā). Note in this connection the reference by Darius I in the
Behistun Inscription to his father Hystaspes as having been made a king. Since chronological
reckoning shows that he must have been only a sub-king who ruled under the authority of Cyrus,
this established that it was Cyrus’s policy to permit subordinate rulers to reign under him with
the title of king.
It has been objected that a mere viceroy would not have addressed a decree to the inhabitants of
“all the earth” (Dan. 6:25). If the word earth refers to the whole inhabited Near East, the
objection is well taken (since the authority of Darius the Mede would necessarily have been
confined to the former dominions of Nebuchadnezzar, which did not include Asia Minor, North
Assyria, Media, or Persia). But it should be pointed out that the Aramaic word ˒ar˓ā (like its
Hebrew cognate ˒ereṣ) may signify only “land or country,” rather than having the wider
significance. So construed, the term presents no difficulty at all. Yet it should also be pointed out
that part of the ancient titulary of the king of Babylon ever since the time of Hammurabi was the
phrase šar kiššati or “king of the universe” (“king of all”). In his decree, therefore, Darius the
Mede may simply have been following ancient custom in using terminology which implied a
theoretical claim to universal dominion.
The question remains, however, who was this Darius the Mede? No ancient historian refers to
him by this name. Nevertheless, there is powerful cumulative evidence to show that he is to be
identified with a governor named Gubaru, who is referred to both by the cuneiform records and
by the Greek historians as playing a key role in the capture of Babylon and its subsequent
administration. For some decades it has been customary to identify this Gubaru (“Gobryas,”
Greek) with the ruler mentioned by Daniel. Nevertheless, there have been some puzzling
discrepancies in the ancient records concerning this personage, and these have encouraged
critical scholars like H. H. Rowley to reject the identification between Gubaru and Darius the
Mede as altogether untenable.
Rowley’s arguments have been superseded, however, by the able work of J. C. Whitcomb in his
Darius the Mede (1959). Whitcomb has gathered together all the ancient inscriptions referring to
Ugbaru, Gubaru, and Gaubaruva, to be found in the Nabonidus Chronicle, the Contenau Texts,
the Pohl Texts, the Tremayne Texts, and the Behistun Inscription. By careful comparison and the
process of elimination, Whitcomb shows that the former assumption that Ugbaru and Gubaru
were variant spellings of the same name is quite erroneous and has given rise to bewildering
confusion. Ugbaru was an elderly general who had been governor of Gutium; it was he who
engineered the capture of Babylon by the stratagem of deflecting the water of the Euphrates into
an artificial channel. While it is true that no cuneiform document yet discovered refers to
Ugbaru’s role in this, and that the earliest historical record of the stratagem of river-diversion
comes from Herodotus in the 540s (Hist i, 107, 191), nevertheless it is inconceivable that this
account was a free invention of his own. It would have served the official propaganda line of
Cyrus’s government to omit mention of this stratagem in the interests of representing that
Babylon surrendered to him voluntarily. But according to the cuneiform records, Ugbaru lived
only a few weeks after this glorious achievement, apparently being carried off by an untimely
illness. It would appear that after his decease, a man named Gubaru was appointed by Cyrus as
governor of Babylon and of Ebir-nari (“beyond the river”). He is so mentioned in tablets dating
from the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years of Cyrus (i.e., 535, 533, 532, and 531 B.C.) and
in the second, third, fourth, and fifth years of Cambyses (528, 527, 526, and 525 B.C.). He seems
to have perished during the revolts of Pseudo-Smerdis and Darius I, for by March 21, 520 B.C.,
the new satrap of Babylonia is said to be Ushtani.
Whitcomb goes on to say, “It is our conviction that Gubaru, the governor of Babylon and the
region beyond the river, appears in the book of Daniel as Darius the Mede, the monarch who
took charge of the Chaldean kingdom immediately following the death of Belshazzar, and who
appointed satraps and presidents (including Daniel) to assist him in the governing of this
extensive territory with its many peoples. We believe that this identification is the only one
which satisfactorily harmonizes the various lines of evidence which we find in the book of
Daniel and in the contemporary cuneiform records.”
Whitcomb further cites the statement of W. E Albright in “The Date and Personality of the
Chronicler” (JBL, 40:2:11): “It seems to me highly probable that Gobryas did actually assume
the royal dignity along with the name “Darius,” perhaps an old Iranian royal title, while Cyrus
was absent on a European campaign.… After the cuneiform elucidation of the Belshazzar
mystery, showing that the latter was long coregent with his father, the vindication of Darius the
Mede for history was to be expected.… We may safely expect the Babylonian Jewish author to
be acquainted with the main facts of Neo-Babylonian history.” As Albright suggests, it is quite
possible that the name Darius (Darayavahush, in Persian) was a title of honor, just as “Caesar”
or “Augustus” became in the Roman empire. In Medieval Persian (Zend) we find the word dara,
meaning “king.” Possibly Darayavahush would have meant the “royal one.” (The personal name
of Darius I was actually Spantadata, son of Wistaspa [Hystaspes]; Darayawus was his throne-
name. Cf. E W. Konig: “Relief und Inschrift des Konigs Dareios I” [Leiden, 1938], p. 1.)
In this connection a word should be said about the remarkable decree referred to in Dan. 6 which
forbade worship to be directed toward anyone else except Darius himself during the period of
thirty days. Granted that the king later repented of the folly of such a decree when he discovered
it was merely part of a plot to eliminate his faithful servant Daniel, it still is necessary to explain
why he ever sanctioned the measure in the first place. In view of the intimate connection
between religious and political loyalty which governed the attitude of the peoples of that ancient
culture, it might well have been considered a statesmanlike maneuver to compel all the diverse
inhabitants with their heterogeneous tribal and religious loyalties to acknowledge in a very
practical way the supremacy of the new Persian empire which had taken over supreme control of
their domains. A temporary suspension of worship (at least in the sense of presenting petitions
for blessing and aid) was a measure well calculated to convey to the minds of Darius’s subjects
the reality of the change in control from the overlordship of the Chaldeans to that of the Medes
and Persians. In the light of ancient psychology, therefore, it is unwarrantable to rule out of
possibility such a remarkable decree or to condemn it as fabulous or unhistorical, as many critics
have done.

Literary and Linguistic Arguments for the Late Date of Daniel

1. Foreign loanwords were found in the Aramaic of Daniel. It has been alleged that the numerous
foreign words in the Aramaic portion of Daniel (and to a lesser extent also in the Hebrew
portion) conclusively demonstrate an origin much later than the sixth century B.C. There are no
less than fifteen words of probable Persian origin (although not all these have actually been
discovered in any known Persian documents), and their presence proves quite conclusively that
even the chapters dating back to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar could not have been composed
in the Chaldean period. This contention may be freely admitted, but conservative scholars do not
maintain that the book of Daniel was composed, in its final form at least, until the establishment
of the Persian authority over Babylonia. Since the text indicates that Daniel himself lived to
serve, for several years at least, under Persian rule, there is no particular reason why he should
not have employed in his language those Persian terms (largely referring to government and
administration) which had found currency in the Aramaic spoken in Babylon by 530 B.C. While
it is true that the Elephantine Papyri contain fewer Persian loan-words than Daniel (H. H.
Rowley in 1929 contended that there were only two—actually there are several more), in the
“Aramaic Documents of the 5th Century B.C.” published by G. R. Driver (Oxford, 1957) and
composed for the most part in Susa or Babylon (op. cit. pp. 10–12), there are no less than twenty-
six Persian loanwords.
But it is alleged that the presence of at least three Greek words in Daniel 3 indicates that the
work must have been composed after the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great.
These three words (in 3:5) are qayterôs (kitharis, Greek), psantērɩ̂ n (psaltērion, in Greek), and
sūmpōnyah (symphonia, Greek). The last of these three does not occur in extant Greek literature
until the time of Plato (ca. 370 B.C.), at least in the sense of a musical instruments From this it
has been argued that the word itself must be as late as the fourth century in Greek usage. But
since we now possess less than one-tenth of the significant Greek literature of the classical
period, we lack suflicient data for timing the precise origin of any particular word or usage in the
development of the Greek vocabulary.
It should carefully be observed that these three words are names of musical instruments and that
such names have always circulated beyond national boundaries as the instruments themselves
have become available to the foreign market. These three were undoubtedly of Greek origin and
circulated with their Greek names in Near Eastern markets, just as foreign musical terms have
made their way into our own language, like the Italian piano and viola. We know that as early as
the reign of Sargon (722–705 B.C.) there were, according to the Assyrian records, Greek captives
who were sold into slavery from Cyprus, Ionia, Lydia, and Cilicia. The Greek poet Alcaeus of
Lesbos (fl. 600 B.C.) mentions that his brother Antimenidas served in the Babylonian army. It is
therefore evident that Greek mercenaries, Greek slaves, and Greek musical instruments were
current in the Semitic Near East long before the time of Daniel. It is also significant that in the
Neo-Babylonian ration tablets published by E. F. Weidner, Ionian carpenters and shipbuilders
are mentioned among the recipients of rations from Nebuchadnezzar’s commissary—along with
musicians from Ashkelon and elsewhere (cf. “Jojachin Konig von Juda” in Melanges Syriens,
vol. 2, 1939, pp. 923–35).
Two or three other words have been mistakenly assigned by some authors to a Greek origin, but
these have now been thoroughly discredited. One of them was kārôz (“herald”) which was
supposedly derived from the Greek kēryx (Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon). But in more recent
works, like Koehler-Baumgartner’s Hebrew Lexicon, this derivation is explicitly rejected in
favor of the old Persian khrausa, meaning “caller.” Kitchen suggests that the word ultimately
came from the Hurrian Kirenze or kirezzi, “proclamation.” C. C. Torrey and A. Cowley regarded
pathgām as derived from Greek, but Kutscher, in Kedem (2:74) published a leather roll of
Arsames from about 410 B.C. in which this term occurs more than once. Needless to say, this
renders a Greek derivation impossible. In all probability it was derived from the Old Persian
pratigama, which meant originally something which has arrived, hence a “communication” or
“order.” Actually, the argument based upon the presence of Greek words turns out to be one of
the most compelling evidences of all that Daniel could not have been composed as late as the
Greek period. By 170 B.C. a Greek-speaking government had been in control of Palestine for 160
years, and Greek political or administrative terms would surely have found their way into the
language of the subject populace. The books of Maccabees testify to the very extensive intrusion
of Greek culture and Greek customs into the life of the Jews by the first half of the second
century, particularly in the big cities.
Furthermore it should be observed that even in the Septuagint translation of Daniel, which dates
presumably from 100 B.C., or sixty-five years after Judas Maccabeus, the rendition of several of
the Aramaic technical terms for state officials was mere conjecture. For example, in Dan. 3:2
˓aḏargāzerayyā, (“counselors”) is rendered hypatous (“grandees”); gedobrayyā’ (“treasurers”) by
dioikētēs (“administrators, governors”); and tiptayyē, or detāberayyā, (“magistrates,” or “judges”)
by the one general phrase tous ˒ep˒exousiōn (“those in authority”). (Theodotion uses still other
translations, such as hēgoumenous and tyrannous, for the first two officials just mentioned.) It is
impossible to explain how within five or six decades after Daniel was first composed (according
to the Maccabean date hypothesis) the meaning of these terms could have been so completely
forgotten even by the Jews in Egypt, who remained quite conversant in Aramaic as well as in
Greek. (Cf. D. J. Wiseman, Some Problems in the Book of Daniel, p. 43.)
This is especially significant in view of the fact that the Aramaic of Daniel was a linguistic
medium which readily absorbed foreign terminology. It includes approximately fifteen words of
Persian origin, almost all of which relate to government and politics. It is hard to conceive,
therefore, how after Greek had been the language of government for over 160 years, no single
Greek term pertaining to politics or administration had ever intruded into Palestinian Aramaic.
The same generalization holds good for the Hebrew portions of Daniel as well. It contains such
Persian terms as palace (appeden in 11:45, from apadāna), noblemen (partemɩ̂ n 1:3, from
fratama) and king’s portion (paṯbāg in 1:5, from patibaga). Yet the Hebrew chapters contain not
a single word of Greek origin (even though, according to some critics, Daniel’s Hebrew is later
than his Aramaic sections).
It was formerly asserted that the Aramaic of Daniel is of the Western dialect and hence could not
have been composed in Babylon, as would have been the case if the sixth-century Daniel was its
real author. Recent discoveries of fifth-century Aramaic documents, however, have shown quite
conclusively that Daniel was, like Ezra, written in a form of Imperial Aramaic
(Reichsaramaisch), an official or literary dialect which had currency in all parts of the Near East.
Thus the relationship to the Aramaic of the Elephantine Papyri from southern Egypt is a very
close one, inasmuch as they too were written in the Imperial Aramaic. E. Y. Kutscher, in a
review of G. D. Driver’s Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century B.C. (1954), comments upon
linguistic peculiarities of these letters which were sent from Babylon and Susa in the Eastern
Aramaic area. He states: “With regard to Biblical Aramaic, which in word order and other traits
is of the Eastern type (i.e., freer and more flexible in word order) and has scarcely any Western
characteristics at all, it is plausible to conclude that it originated in the East. A final verdict on
this matter, however, must await the publication of all the Aramaic texts from Qumran.”
(Noteworthy is the uniform tendency to put the verb late in the clause.)
2. Grammatical evidences for early date of Daniel’s Aramaic. One noteworthy characteristic in
the Aramaic of Daniel which marks it as of early origin is to be found in the fairly frequent
interval-vowel-change passives. That is to say, instead of adhering exclusively to the standard
method of expressing the passive (by the prefix hit- or ˒et-), the biblical Aramaic used a hophal
formation (e.g., ḥonḥat from neḥat, hussaq from seliq, hūbad from abad and hu˓al from ˒âlal).
Note than an occasional hophal appears also in a 420 B.C. Elephantine papyrus (CAP #20, line 7)
“they were entrusted.” No such examples of hophal forms have as yet been discovered in any of
the Aramaic documents published from the Dead Sea caves (some of which, like the Genesis
Apocryphon, date from scarcely a century later than the Maccabean wars). Such forms cannot be
dismissed as mere Hebraisms employed by the Jewish author of Daniel, since even the Jewish
scribes of the Targums never used such forms; but only the ˒et- type of passive. If Hebrew
influence could have produced internal-vowel passives it might reasonably be expected to have
shown itself even in the Targums.
Largely because of the close relationship of biblical Aramaic to the Elephantine Papyri (which
date from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.), many scholars have been forced to date chapters 2–
7 of the book of Daniel as no later than the third century B.C. Even H. H. Rowley concedes that
the evidence is conclusive that biblical Aramaic stands somewhere between the Elephantine
Papyri and the Aramaic of the Nabatean and Palmyrene Inscriptions. Sachau states quite plainly
that the language of the Papyri is in all essential respects identical with biblical Aramaic.
C. C. Torrey and Montgomery came to the conclusion that Dan. 1–6 was written between 245
and 225 B.C., and that a later editor translated chapter 1 into Hebrew around 165 B.C. Eissfeldt
(Einleitung, 1934) likewise indicated that the first six chapters came from the third century B.C.
and the last six were from the Maccabean period and were intended as a continuation of the older
work. Gustav Hoelscher in Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel (1919) followed the view of Ernst
Sellin, who stated that an older Aramaic Daniel apocalyptic or biography comprised chapters 1–7
(chap. 1 being later translated into Hebrew, and Maccabean insertions having been made in
chaps. 2 and 7), whereas chapters 8–12 were truly Maccabean in date. Hoelscher states that it
might have been possible that the author of the collection of legends (chaps. 2–6) took them
directly from oral tradition or found them already in older written form. Yet he points out that
they show unmistakably the hand of a single author running throughout the text because of a
certain uniformity in style and method of treatment. Both Hoelscher and Martin Noth (Zur
Komposition des Buches Daniel, 1926) attempted to date the origin of certain elements and
motifs by a correlation with current events of Hellenistic history insofar as they were known to
them.
The mere fact that chapters 2–7 of Daniel were written in Aramaic and the remainder in Hebrew
has been adduced by some writers as a ground for a late dating of the document. Some have
argued that Aramaic would hardly have been favored over the traditionally sacred Hebrew until a
period so late in Jewish history that Hebrew had become almost unintelligible and forgotten by
all except the rabbis themselves. (This position is impossible to maintain, however, if the
Hebrew chapters were composed even later than the Aramaic—a clear self-contradiction.) It
should be understood, however, that the claim of the sacrosanctity of Hebrew is a mere theory
which rests on slender foundations. The Jews apparently took no exception to the Aramaic
sections in the book of Ezra, most of which consist of copies of correspondence carried on in
Aramaic between the local governments of Palestine and the Persian imperial court from
approximately 520 to 460 B.C. If Ezra can be accepted as an authentic document from the middle
of the fifth century, when so many of its chapters were largely composed in Aramaic, it is hard to
see why the six Aramaic chapters of Daniel must be dated two centuries later than that. It should
be carefully observed that in the Babylon of the late sixth century, in which Daniel purportedly
lived, the predominant language spoken by the heterogeneous population of this metropolis was
Aramaic. It is therefore not surprising that an inhabitant of that city should have resorted to
Aramaic in composing a portion of his memoirs.
As to the question of why half the book was written in Aramaic and half in Hebrew, the reason
for the choice is fairly obvious. Those portions of Daniel’s prophecy which deal generally with
Gentile affairs (the four kingdoms of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the humiliation of that king in
the episode of the fiery furnace and by his seven years of insanity, and also the experiences of
Belshazzar and Darius the Mede) were put into a linguistic medium which all the public could
appreciate whether Jew or Gentile. But those portions which were of particularly Jewish interest
(chaps. 1, 8–12) were put into Hebrew in order that they might be understood by the Jews alone.
This was peculiarly appropriate because of the command in chapter 12 to keep these later
predictions more or less secret and seal them up until the time of fulfillment (12:9).
So far as the Hebrew of Daniel is concerned, we have already seen that it contains a significant
number of Persian governmental terms, indicating its origin during the period of Persian
domination. There is no trace whatsoever of Greek influence on the language. It is interesting to
observe that the Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, dating from about 200–180 B.C., shortly before
the Maccabean period, furnishes us with a fair sample of the type of Hebrew which would have
been current at the time Daniel was written—according to the late-date theorists. Since
Ecclesiasticus is a document of the wisdom literature, it is to be expected that it would bear no
great stylistic resemblances to the later chapters of Daniel. Nevertheless, it is quite striking that
Ecclesiasticus exhibits later linguistic characteristics than Daniel, being somewhat rabbinical in
tendency. Israel Levi in his Introduction to the Hebrew Text of Ecclesiasticus (1904) lists the
following: (a) new verbal forms borrowed mainly from Aramaic, (b) excessive use of the hiphil
and hithpael conjugations, and (c) peculiarities of various sorts heralding the approach of
Mishnaic Hebrew.
So far as the Qumran material is concerned, none of the sectarian documents composed in
Hebrew (The Manual of Discipline, The War of the Children of Light Against the Children of
Darkness, The Thanksgiving Psalms) in that collection show any distinctive characteristics in
common with the Hebrew chapters of Daniel. Cf. J. H. Skilton, ed., The Law and the Prophets
(Nutley, NJ.: Presbyterian & Reformed), chap. 41: “The Hebrew of Daniel Compared with the
Qumran Sectarian Documents,” by G. L. Archer, pp. 470–81. Nor is there the slightest
resemblance between the Aramaic of the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic chapters of
Daniel.
Dated in the first century B.C., this copy of the Genesis Apocryphon presents us with at least five
legible columns of Aramaic composed within a century of the alleged date of Daniel, according
to the Maccabean date hypothesis. As such it surely should have exhibited many striking points
of resemblance to the Aramaic of Dan. 2–7, in grammar, style, and vocabulary. This is especially
true since the editors of this manuscript, N. Avigad and Y. Yadin, suggest that the original was
composed as early as the third century B.C. Kutscher describes (“The Language of the Genesis-
Apocryphon” in Scripta Hierosolymita (Jerusalem, 1958], p. 3) the language of the Apocryphon
as neither Imperial Aramaic in general nor biblical Aramaic in particular. It should be noted that
in contrast to the Eastern dialectical traits of Daniel, the Apocryphon shows distinctly Western
traits, such as the prior position of the verb in its clause, the use of kaman instead of kemah for
“how much, how great?” and of tammān instead of tammah for “there.” Note also the appearance
of a mif˓ōl instead of a mif˓al for the peal infinitive; for instance, misbōq (“to leave”), instead of
the biblical misbaq, a form which hitherto had been classed as peculiar to the Palestinian
Targumic or Midrashic dialect. If Daniel then was composed in Eastern Aramaic, it could not
possibly have been written in second-century Palestine, as the Maccabean theory demands.
At this point mention should be made of one phonetic characteristic of Daniel’s Aramaic to
which appeal has been made by H. H. Rowley, J. A. Montgomery, and others, as an evidence for
a later date of composition. In the earlier Aramaic inscriptions, as well as in the Elephantine
Papyri of the fifth century, a certain phoneme appears as z, which in biblical Aramaic almost
always appears as d. It is urged that if Daniel had been written as early as the fifth century B.C.
(to say nothing of the sixth century) the older spelling with z should have been retained.
In answer to this, it ought to be pointed out that up to the present time no Aramaic documents
from any region have been discovered from the sixth century B.C., much less from the eastern or
Babylonian section of the Aramaic-speaking world. Until such documents are discovered, it is
premature to say whether the shift from z to d had taken place by that period. It certainly ought to
be recognized that this shift had consistently taken place in the Aramaic chapters of Ezra (at least
so far as the text has come down to us), which presumably reflected the pronunciation of
Aramaic in Persia, from which Ezra came. It would therefore appear that the shift from z to d
took place earlier in the East than it did in the West (since the Elephantine Papyri show this shift
only in four or five examples: ˒-,h-d for ˒h-z [“take”], d-y 1-k-y for z-y 1-k-y [“yours”] in A.
Cowley’s Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (London: Oxford, 1923), (hereafter CAP),
13:7, 11, 16; d-k-˒ for z-k-˒ [“clean”] CAP 14:6, 9; d-k-y for z-k-y [“that”] CAP 21:6; 27:12; d-n-
h for z-n-h [“this”] CAP 16:9). See also CAP 30 m-d-b-h-˒ (“altar”) and d-b-ḥ-n (“sacrificing”)
instead of m-z-b-ḥ and z-b-ḥ-n. It is by no means necessary to suppose all the consonantal shifts
took place simultaneously in Aramaic throughout the whole area of the Near East where this
language was current. (For example, in the history of Medieval German it may be verified from
documentary evidence that the High German consonantal shifts took place earlier in some
regions of Germany than they did in others.)
Moreover, many grammatical traits mark the Apocryphon as centuries later than the Aramaic of
Daniel, Ezra, or the Elephantine Papyri, such as -ha˒ for the feminine third person possessive
pronoun, instead of -āh; dēn for “this” instead of denah; the ending -iyat for third feminine
singular perfect of lamed-aleph verbs instead of -āt—and many other examples. As for the
vocabulary, a considerable number of words occur in the Apocryphon which have hitherto not
been discovered in Aramaic documents prior to the Targum and Talmud. (A full account of these
distinctives in grammar and vocabulary will be found in the author’s article [chap. 11] in New
Perspectives on the Old Testament, ed. B. Payne [Waco, Tex.: Word, 1969]). Neither in
morphology, nor syntax, nor style of expression can any evidence be found in Daniel for a date
of composition approaching the period of these sectarian documents. According to the
Maccabean Date Theory, the entire corpus of Daniel had to have been composed in Judea in the
second century B.C., only a few decades before these documents from Qumran. In the light of
this newly discovered linguistic evidence, therefore, it would seem impossible

29
Daniel (continued)

Theological Arguments Advanced to Show the Late Date of Daniel

ADHERENTS OF THE MACCABEAN THEORY customarily lay great emphasis upon the
supposed development or evolution of religious thought of the Israelite nation. They point to
motifs and emphases in Daniel which they believe to be akin to those characterizing the
apocryphal literature of the Inter-testamental Period (such works as the Book of Enoch and the
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, or even such books of the Apocrypha as Tobit and
Susanna). These emphases include the prominence of angels, the stress upon the last judgment,
the resurrection of the dead, and the establishment of the final kingdom of God upon earth with
the Messiah as the supreme ruler of the world. It is conceded that there are occasional references
to angels and judgment, the kingship of God, and the Messiah in some earlier books of the Old
Testament, but it is felt that these teachings have achieved a far more developed form in Daniel
than in Ezekiel or Zechariah. The angelology in particular is thought to resemble that of the Book
of Enoch (first century B.C.).
This, however, is a very difficult statement to substantiate. Any reader may easily verify the fact
that Zechariah also mentions the Messiah and angels on several occasions in his prophecies,
which date from 519 to approximately 470 B.C. (2:3; 3:1; 6:12; 9:9; 13:1; 14:5). Furthermore,
angels play a very similar role in Zechariah to that in Daniel, namely, that of interpreting the
significance of visions which were presented to the prophet. The affinity is close enough to
warrant the deduction that either Zechariah had influenced Daniel or Daniel had influenced
Zechariah. There are two significant references to the Messiah in Malachi as well (Mal. 3:1 and
4:2) and to the last judgment also in chapter 3. On the other hand, works which are admittedly of
the second century B.C., such as 1 Maccabees and the Greek additions to Daniel, Baruch, and
Judith, show none of these four elements (angelology, resurrection, last judgment, and Messiah)
which are asserted to be so characteristic of this period that they betray the second-century origin
of Daniel. Even the Jewish apocryphal literature from the first century A.D. contains only two
works (out of a possible sixteen) having all four characteristics, namely, the Vision of Isaiah and
the Ascension of Isaiah.
Perhaps it would be well at this point to review the occurrence of these four elements in the
earlier books of the Old Testament. Concerning the ranks of angels, Genesis mentions cherubim,
Joshua refers to a prince of the angels. Their function was said to be the delivery of messages to
Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, and various prophets such as Isaiah, Zechariah, and Ezekiel.
Thus as early as the Torah we find the angels revealing the will of God, furnishing protection for
God’s people, and destroying the forces of the enemy. So far as the resurrection is concerned,
there is the famous affirmation of Job in Job 19:25–26 (although another interpretation of this
passage is possible); Isaiah’s affirmation in 26:19 (“Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall
arise,” ASV); Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, and possibly the resuscitation of the
dead by Elijah and Elisha. On the other hand, of the large number of postcanonical works, only
the Book of the Twelve Patriarchs refers to a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked as
is found in Dan. 12:2. The doctrine of the last judgment is mentioned in Isaiah, Zephaniah,
Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and in many of the psalms. In many instances this judgment
pertains to the nations of the world as well as to Israel. References to the book of life or a book
of remembrance go back as far as Ex. 32:32–33 and Isa. 4:3 (cf. Isa. 65:6; Ps. 69:28; and Mal.
3:16). The concept of the Messiah appears as early as Gen. 3:15 and 49:10 (cf. Num. 24:17;
Deut. 18:15; Isa. 9:6–7; 11:1; Jer. 23:5–6; 33:11–17; Ezek. 34:23–31; Mic. 5:2).
Doubtless it is possible to make out some kind of progression in the development of these
doctrines during the history of God’s revelation to Israel, but it is a mistake to suppose that
Daniel contains anything radically new in any of the four areas under dispute. Moreover, these
precise doctrines were most appropriate for Israel’s comfort and encouragement during the time
of captivity and on the threshold of their return to the promised land.

Exegetical Arguments for the Late Date of Daniel

Champions of the Maccabean Date Theory allege that it was impossible for a sixth-century
author to have composed such detailed predictions concerning coming events in the history of
Israel as are contained in the prophetic chapters of the book of Daniel. They also allege that it is
a suspicious circumstance that such accurate predictions only extend to the reign of Antiochus IV
(175–164 B.C.) but nothing beyond this time. The obvious conclusion to draw, therefore, is that
the entire work was composed by one who lived in the reign of Antiochus IV and who composed
this literary fiction in order to encourage the Jewish patriots of his own generation to join with
the Maccabees in throwing off the Syrian yoke. Thus, all of the fulfilled predictions can be
explained as vaticinia ex eventu.
This explanation of the data in Daniel, which is as old as the neo-Platonic polemicist Porphyry
(who died in A.D. 303), depends for its validity on the soundness of the premise that there are no
accurate predictions fulfilled subsequently to 165 B.C. This proposition, however, cannot
successfully be maintained in the light of the internal evidence of the text and its correlation with
the known facts of ancient history. Yet it should be recognized that considerable attention in
Daniel is devoted to the coming events of the reign of Antiochus, for the very good reason that
this period was to present the greatest threat in all of subsequent history (apart, of course, from
the plot of Haman in the time of Esther) to the survival of the faith and nation of Israel.
Assuming that these predictions were given by divine inspiration and that God had a concern for
the preservation of His covenant people, it was to be expected that revelations in Daniel would
make it clear to coming generations that He had not only foreseen but had well provided for the
threat of extinction which was to be posed by Antiochus Epiphanes.
This prophetic emphasis was all the more warranted in view of the fact that Antiochus and his
persecution were to serve as types of the final Antichrist and the great tribulation which is yet to
come in the end time (according to Christ’s Olivet discourse, recorded in Matt. 24 and Mark 13).
This is made evident from the startling way in which the figure of the Greek emperor Antiochus
suddenly blends into the figure of the latter day Antichrist in Dan. 11, beginning with verse 40.
(Note that the Little Horn is said in 11:45 to meet his death in Palestine, whereas Antiochus IV
actually died in Tabae, Persia.) It is interesting to note that even S. R. Driver admits that these
last mentioned verses do not correspond with what is known of the final stages of Antiochus’
career; actually he met his end at Tabae in Persia after a vain attempt to plunder the rich temple
of Elymais in Elam.
It is fair to say that the weakest spot in the whole structure of the Maccabean theory is to be
found in the identification of the fourth empire predicted in chapter 2. In order to maintain their
position, the late-date theorists have to interpret this fourth empire as referring to the kingdom of
the Macedonians or Greeks founded by Alexander the Great around 330 B.C. This means that the
third empire must be identified with the Persian realm established by Cyrus the Great, and the
second empire has to be the short-lived Median power, briefly maintained by the legendary
Darius the Mede. According to this interpretation, then, the head of gold in chapter 2 represents
the Chaldean empire, the breast of silver the Median empire, the belly and the thighs of brass the
Persian empire, and the legs of iron the Greek empire. Although this identification of the four
empires is widely held by scholars today, it is scarcely tenable in the light of internal evidence.
That is to say, the text of Daniel itself gives the strongest indications that the author considered
the Medes and Persians as components of the one and same empire, and that despite his
designation of King Darius as “the Mede,” he never entertained the notion that there was at any
time a separate and distinct Median empire previous to the Persian Empire.
In the first place, the symbolism of Dan. 7 precludes the possibility of identifying the second
empire as Media and the third empire as Persia. In this chapter, the first kingdom is represented
by a lion. (All scholars agree that this represents the Chaldean or Babylonian realm.) The second
kingdom appears as a bear devouring three ribs. This would well correspond to the three major
conquests of the Medo-Persian empire: Lydia, Babylon, and Egypt (under Cyrus the Great and
Cambyses). The third empire is represented as a leopard with four wings and four heads. There is
no record that the Persian empire was divided into four parts, but it is well known that the empire
of Alexander the Great separated into four parts subsequent to his death, namely, Macedon-
Greece, Thrace-Asia Minor, the Seleucid empire (including Syria, Babylonia, and Persia), and
Egypt. The natural inference, therefore, would be that the leopard represented the Greek empire.
The fourth kingdom is presented as a fearsome ten-horned beast, incomparably more powerful
than the others and able to devour the whole earth. The ten horns strongly suggest the ten toes of
the image described in chapter 2, and it should be noted that these toes are described in chapter 2
as having a close connection with the two legs of iron. The two legs can easily be identified with
the Roman empire, which in the time of Diocletian divided into the Eastern and the Western
Roman empires. But there is no way in which they can be reconciled with the history of the
Greek empire which followed upon Alexander’s death.
In Dan. 8 we have further symbolism to aid us in this identification of empires two and three.
There a two-horned ram (one horn of which is higher than the other, just as Persia overshadowed
Media in Cyrus’s empire) is finally overthrown by a hegoat, who at first shows but one horn
(easily identified with Alexander the Great) but subsequently sprouts four horns (i.e., Macedon,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt), out of which there finally develops a little horn, that is, Antiochus
Epiphanes.
From the standpoint of the symbolism of chapters 2, 7, and 8, therefore, the identification of the
four empires with Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome presents a perfect correspondence,
whereas the identifications involved in the Maccabean Date Theory present the most formidable
discrepancies.

HISTORY OF KINGDOMS

Diadochi (i.e. “Successors”):

Antipater, reigned as regent 321–319 B.C.
Cassander, his son, ruled 319–317 B.C. and secured Macedonia and Greece. He assumed
the title of king in 305 after he had murdered Alexander IV in 310.
Lycimachus received custody of Thrace in 323 B.C., and Asia Minor in 301, assuming
the title of king in 305 B.C.
Ptolemy took over Egypt in 323 B.C.; after 301 B.C. he also took over Phoenicia and re-
conquered Cyprus in 294 B.C. He also assumed the title of king in 305, expelling
Demetrius Poliorcetes from Macedonia in 288, and died in 281 B.C.
Seleucus I independent king of Babylon in 311 B.C., conquered all the way to the Indus
River in 302 B.C.—died in 281.
Perdiccas served earlier as regent of the empire from 323 to 321 B.C.
Antigonus I assumed postion of regent in 320, fought Eumenes, killing him in 316 B.C.
and then claimed all Asia under his control. He died in 301 at the Battle of Ipsus.
Demetrius Poliorcetes defeated Ptolemy at Cyprus in 306 B.C. (although Ptolemy later
conquered it). Demetrius narrowly escaped from his own defeat at the Battle of Ipsus in
301 B.C.
To sum up, then, it should be understood that proir to the development of these four
realms an effort was made to keep the Alexandrian empire together. First Perdiccas was
chosen as regent, but he passed away in 321 B.C. After him came Antigonus I who
defeated King Eumenes of Pergamum, slaying him in 316 B.C., and subsequently claimed
all of Asia under his control. Eventually, however, Antigonus and his son, Demetrius
Poliorcetes, were defeated by the armies of Antipater, Lycimachus, and seleucus at the
Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. Then, along with Ptolemy, the way was clear for each of them
to claim the title of king and maintain a seperate realm.
In this connection it ought to be noted that the strongest argument for identifying Daniel’s fourth
empire with that of Alexander and his Greek successors is derived from the appearance of the
little horn in chapters 7 and 8. That is to say, in chapter 7 the little horn admittedly develops from
the fourth empire, that is, from the fearsome ten-horned beast who overthrows the four-winged
leopard. But in chapter 8, the little horn develops from the head of the he-goat, who plainly
represents the Greek empire. As we have already mentioned, this goat commenced its career with
one horn (Alexander the Great), but then produced four others in its place. There can be no
question that the little horn in chapter 8 points to a ruler of the Greek empire, that is, Antiochus
Epiphanes (cf. 8:9). The critics therefore assume that since the same term is used, the little horn
in chapter 7 must refer to the same individual. This, however, can hardly be the case, since the
four-winged leopard of chapter 7 (i.e., 7:24) clearly corresponds to the four-horned goat of
chapter 8; that is, both represent the Greek empire which divided into four after Alexander’s
death. The only reasonable deduction to draw is that there are two little horns involved in the
symbolic visions of Daniel. One of them emerges from the third empire, and the other is to
emerge from the fourth. It would seem that the relationship is that of type (Antiochus IV of the
third kingdom) and antitype (the Antichrist who is to arise from the latter-day form of the fourth
empire). This is the only explanation which satisfies all the data and which throws light upon
11:4–45, where the figure of the historic Antiochus suddenly blends into the figure of an
Antichrist who is yet to come in the end time.
Two other considerations should be adduced to show that the author regarded the Medes and
Persians as constituting the one and same empire. In Dan. 6, Darius is said to be bound by “the
law of the Medes and Persians,” so that he could not revoke the decree consigning Daniel to the
lions’ den. If the author regarded Darius as ruler of an independent Median empire earlier in time
than the Persian, it is impossible to explain why he would have been bound by the laws of the
Persians. Second, we have the evidence of the handwriting on the wall as interpreted by Daniel
in 5:28. There Daniel is represented as interpreting the inscription to Belshazzar, the last king of
the first empire, that is, the kingdom of the Chaldeans. He says in interpreting the third word,
peres, “Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” This is obviously a word
play in which the term parsɩ̂ n, or rather its singular peres, is derived from the verb peras,
meaning “to divide or separate.” But it is also explained as pointing to pārās, or “Persian.” This
can only mean that according to the author, the Chaldean empire was removed from Belshazzar
as the last representative of the first empire and given to the Medes and Persians who constituted
the second empire. This cannot mean that the rule was first given to the Medes and only later to
be transmitted to the Persians, because the significant word which appeared in the handwriting
on the wall was quite specifically the word “Persia.” The sequence, therefore, is clear: the empire
passed from the Chaldeans to the Persians. There can be no legitimate doubt that the author
regarded the Persians as masters of the second empire. This being the case, we must conclude
that the fourth empire indeed represented Rome.
If, then, the fourth empire of chapter 2, as corroborated by the other symbolic representations of
chapter 7, clearly pointed forward to the establishment of the Roman empire, it can only follow
that we are dealing here with genuine predictive prophecy and not a mere vaticinium ex eventu.
According to the Maccabean Date Theory, Daniel was composed between 168 and 165 B.C.,
whereas the Roman empire did not commence (for the Jews at least) until 63 B.C., when Pompey
the Great took over that part of the Near East which included Palestine. To be sure, Hannibal had
already been defeated by Scipio at Zama in 202 B.C., and Antiochus III had been crushed at
Magnesia in 190, but the Romans had still not advanced beyond the limits of Europe by 165,
except to establish a vassal kingdom in Asia Minor and a protectorate over Egypt. But certainly,
as things stood in 165 B.C., no human being could have predicted with any assurance that the
Hellenic monarchies of the Near East would be engulfed by the new power which had arisen in
the West. No man then living could have foreseen that this Italian republic would have exerted a
sway more ruthless and widespread than any empire that had ever preceded it. This one
circumstance alone, then, that Daniel predicts the Roman empire, is sufficient to overthrow the
entire Maccabean Date Hypothesis (which of course was an attempt to explain away the
supernatural element of prediction and fulfillment). As we shall presently see, there are other
remarkable predictions in this book which mark it as of divine inspiration and not a mere
historical novel written in the time of Maccabees.
It should also be pointed out that the Maccabean Date Theory fails to explain how the book of
Daniel ever came to be accepted by the later Jews as Holy Scripture. In Deut. 18:22 the principle
was laid down: “If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath
not spoken.” That is to say, any person claiming to be a genuine prophet of the Lord, whose
predictions of coming events do not come to pass, is to be utterly rejected. There can be no doubt
that the description given in Dan. 11:40–45 relative to the latter end of the little horn does not at
all correspond to the manner in which Antiochus Epiphanes met his death; there is a definite
break in the prophetic revelation beginning at 11:40. This break is indicated by the words, “and
at the time of the end.” Those who espouse the Liberal theory can only allege that the Maccabean
author of Daniel was unsuccessful in his effort to predict the manner of Antiochus’s downfall.
He did his best, but it simply did not come out that way. Yet if this was actually the case, it is
impossible to conceive how the Jews could have continued to regard this writing as canonical or
authoritative, since it contained false prophecy. If, however, the work was composed by the
historic Daniel, it is easy to see how this work would have been preserved as the genuine Word
of God. The fact that so many events in subsequent history were accurately predicted back in the
sixth century by the historic Daniel would serve as an authentication of its trustworthiness as a
divine revelation.

Additional Proofs of Daniel’s Authorship

First of all, we have the clear testimony of the Lord Jesus Himself in the Olivet discourse. In
Matt. 24:15, He refers to “the abomination of desolation, spoken of through [dia] Daniel the
prophet.” The phrase “abomination of desolation” occurs three times in Daniel (9:27; 11:31;
12:11). If these words of Christ are reliably reported, we can only conclude that He believed the
historic Daniel to be the personal author of the prophecies containing this phrase. No other
interpretation is possible in the light of the preposition dia, which refers to personal agency. It is
significant that Jesus regarded this “abomination” as something to be brought to pass in a future
age rather than being simply the idol of Zeus set up by Antiochus in the temple, as the
Maccabean theorists insist.
Second, the author of Daniel shows such an accurate knowledge of sixth-century events as would
not have been open to a second-century writer; for example, in 8:2, the city of Shushan is
described as being in the province of Elam back in the time of the Chaldeans. But from the
Greek and Roman historians we learn that in the Persian period Shushan, or Susa, was assigned
to a new province which was named after it, Susiana, and the formerly more extensive province
of Elam was restricted to the territory west of the Eulaeus River. It is reasonable to conclude that
only a very early author would have known that Susa was once considered part of the province
of Elam.
Third, we have in chapter 9 a series of remarkable predictions which defy any other
interpretation but that they point to the coming of Christ and His crucifixion ca. A.D. 30,
followed by the destruction of the city of Jerusalem within the ensuing decades. In Dan. 9:25–26,
it is stated that sixty-nine heptads of years (i.e., 483 years) will ensue between a “decree” to
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and the cutting off of Messiah the Prince. In 9:25–26, we read:
“Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to
build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two
weeks.… And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and
the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.”
There are two ways of computing these sixty-nine heptads (or 483 years). First, by starting from
the decree of Artaxerxes issued to Nehemiah in 445 B.C. (cf. Neh. 2:4, 8) and reckoning the 483
years as lunar years of 360 days each, which would be equivalent to 471 solar years and would
result in the date A.D. 26 for the appearance of the Messiah and His “cutting off” (or crucifixion).
Or, more reasonably, the starting point may be identified with the decree of Artaxerxes in his
seventh year, issued for the benefit of Ezra in 457 B.C. This apparently included authority for
Ezra to restore and build the city of Jerusalem (as we may deduce from Ezra 7:6–7, and also 9:9,
which states, “God … hath extended lovingkindness unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to
give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the ruins thereof, and to give us a
wall in Judea and in Jerusalem,” ASV). Even though Ezra did not actually succeed in
accomplishing the rebuilding of the walls until Nehemiah arrived eleven or twelve years later, it
is logical to understand 457 B.C. as the terminus a quo for the decree predicted in Dan. 9:25; 483
solar years from 457 B.C. would come Out to A.D. 26 as the time of Christ’s ministry (or A.D. 27,
since a year is gained when passing from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1). Note that the wording of verse 26,
“And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off,” does not compel us to understand
the 483 as pinpointing the time of the actual crucifixion; it is simply that after the appearance of
the Messiah, He was going to be cut off. It should be noted that in Neh. 1:3–4 Nehemiah was
shocked and disheartened by the news that the walls and gates of Jerusalem had recently been
destroyed (presumably by the same hostile neighboring nations as later tried to frustrate
Nehemiah himself—(Neh. 2:19–20, 4:1–3; 7–23). This strongly suggests that Ezra himself had
earlier attempted to rebuild but had been overcome by these malicious raiders. (It is out of the
question to understand that in 446 … Nehemiah could have been shocked with the news that the
walls of Jerusalem had just been destroyed in 587, 140 years ago!)

Theory of Diverse Sources for the Origin of Daniel

Mention has already been made of the concessions by Hoelscher and Torrey that the Aramaic
portions of the book of Dan. originated from the third century B.C., although they feel that the
chapters in Hebrew were quite definitely composed by an unknown Maccabean novelist. Since
the allowance of such earlier components would seem to undermine the supporting structure for
the Maccabean date as a whole, it is appropriate to summarize the suggestions made by
proponents of this earlier source theory and to append a few pertinent comments.
In 1909 C. C. Torrey published his view that the first half of Daniel was composed about the
middle of the third century B.C., whereas the second half originated with a Maccabean author
who translated chapter 1 into Hebrew and then composed chapter 7 in Aramaic in order to make
it dovetail more closely with chapters 2–6. Montgomery in the ICC accepted this suggestion with
this exception: he regarded chapter 7 as a composition distinct from the other two sections. Otto
Eissfeldt in his Einleitung (1934) espoused the same view: that the first six chapters were from
the third century, and the last six were from the Maccabean period and composed as a
continuation of the older work.
Gustav Hoelscher in Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel (1919) had strongly supported the pre-
Maccabean origin of chapters 1–7, demonstrating very convincingly that Nebuchadnezzar as
portrayed in chapters 2–4 represented a far more enlightened and tolerant attitude toward the
Jewish religion (generally speaking) than did the Greek tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes, and
therefore could not have served as a type of the latter. Martin Noth in Zur Komposition des
Buches Daniel (1926) went so far as to date the original portions of chapters 2 and 7 from the
time of Alexander the Great; then, during the third century, the legends of chapters 1–6 were
collected and the vision of the four kingdoms was included in a remolded form.
H. L. Ginsburg in his “Studies in Daniel” (cf. pp. 5ff., 27ff.) in 1948 undertook to isolate six
different authors who contributed to the corpus of Daniel: chapters 1–6 were composed between
292 and 261 B.C.; chapter 2 was then subjected to reworking and insertions between 246 and 220
B.C.; chapter 7 came from the Maccabean period generally; chapter 8 was composed between
166 and 165; chapters 10–12 came from a different author from the same period; and chapter 9
came from a slightly later period than 165. H. H. Rowley in The Unity of Daniel (1952)
conceded the earlier existence in oral form of some of the materials composing chapters 1–6, but
nevertheless undertook to defend quite vigorously the essential unity of the composition of
Daniel in its present literary form—that is, in the time of the Maccabees.
It should be noticed that the assignment of considerable sections of Daniel to a century or more
before the time of the Maccabean revolt serves to endanger the whole hypothesis of a second-
century origin as propounded by advocates of the late-date theory. Thus, if the portrait of
Nebuchadnezzar greatly contrasts with the character and attitude of Antiochus Epiphanes, his
relevance to the Maccabean situation becomes rather obscure. The same is true with the rest of
the historical episodes in which the heathen government seems to treat the Jews with toleration
and respect. Moreover it should be observed that the whole concept of vaticinium ex eventu is
fatally compromised if Dan. 1–7 was in fact composed before the fulfilment of the political
developments so explicitly foretold in those seven chapters.
 30
Post-exilic Historical Books: 1 and 2
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther

1 and 2 Chronicles

THE HEBREW TITLE of these books is Diḇerê hāyyāmɩ̂ m or, “the accounts of the days,” or,
more literally, “the words of the days.” The purpose of these two volumes is to review the
history of Israel from the dawn of the human race to the Babylonian captivity and Cyrus’s edict
of restoration. This review is composed with a very definite purpose in mind, to remind the Jews
of the Second Commonwealth of their great spiritual heritage and foster a deeper appreciation of
the divinely ordained foundations of their theocracy as the covenant people of Jehovah. This
historian’s purpose is to show that the true glory of the Hebrew nation was found in its covenant
relationship to God, as safeguarded by the prescribed forms of worship in the temple and
administered by the divinely ordained priesthood and the divinely authorized dynasty of David.
Always the emphasis is upon that which is sound and valid in Israel’s past, as furnishing a
reliable basis for the task of national reconstruction which lay before them. Great stress is placed
upon the rich heritage of Israel and its unbroken connection with the patriarchal beginnings
(hence the prominence accorded to genealogical lists).

Outline of 1 and 2 Chronicles

It is to be noted that 1 Chronicles carries the narrative up to the death of David; 2 Chronicles
continues with the reign of Solomon, the temple builder, and finishes with the Exile and Cyrus’s
decree of restoration. Originally the two books were accounted as one, but as early as the
Septuagint (which gives them the title Paraleipomenōn, “of things omitted”) there seems to have
been a division into two parts. We follow here the brief outline of M. F. Unger (in IGOT, p.
407).

I. Genealogies from Adam to David, 1 Chron. 1:1–9:44

A. From Adam to Jacob, 1:1–2:2
B. Jacob’s generations, 2:2–9:44
II. History of King David, 10:1–29:30
A. The death of Saul, 10:1–14
B. Capture of Zion, and David’s heroes, 11:1–12:40
C. David’s prosperous reign, 13:1–22:1
D. David’s accomplishments on behalf of ritualistic worship, 22:2–29:30
III. History of King Solomon, 2 Chron. 1:1–9:31
 A. Solomon’s wealth and wisdom, 1:1–17
B. His building and dedication of the temple, 2:1–7:22
C. His various activities and death, 8:1–9:31
IV. History of the Kings of Judah, 10:1–36:23
A. From Rehoboam to Zedekiah, 10:1–36:21
B. The edict of Cyrus, 36:22–23

Authorship and Date of Chronicles

Like the other historical books, Chronicles does not specify the name of its author. Internal
evidence points to a period between 450 and 425 B.C. as its time of composition. It is quite
possible that the Talmudic tradition (Baba Bathra, 15a) is correct in assigning the authorship to
Ezra. As the chief architect of the spiritual and moral revival of the Second Commonwealth, he
would have had every incentive to produce a historical survey of this sort. As a Levite from the
priestly line, his viewpoint would have been in perfect agreement with that of the author of this
work, and he would be very apt to lay the stress just where the Chronicler has. It is pertinent to
note that there was embodied in 2 Macc. 2:13–15 a tradition that Governor Nehemiah owned a
considerable library: “He, founding a library, gathered together the books about the kings and
prophets, and the books of David and letters of the kings about sacred gifts.” If Nehemiah did
possess such a sizable collection of reference works, it might very well be that his close
collaborator, Ezra, would have had ready access to these reference works and used them in the
compilation of Chronicles.
E. J. Young favors the theory of Ezra’s authorship, although he has some reservations about the
last two verses of the book (containing Cyrus’s decree) which give indications of being earlier
than the first chapter of Ezra. M. F. Unger inclines to the same view, although he seems to
entertain the possibility that the books were not written until the first half of the fourth century
(IGOT, p. 407). J. E. Steinmueller discounts the Talmudic tradition and regards the author as
unknown. D. N. Freedman espouses the view that the basic work of the Chronicler, starting with
1 Chron. 10, dates from about 515, when the second temple had just been completed. He was
doubtless a colaborer with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, who regarded Zerubbabel as the
legitimate heir of the divine promise to the Davidic dynasty.
Among Liberal scholars there is no unanimity as to the time of composition. W E Albright was
earlier inclined to the view that the Ezra who composed the work lived in the reign of Artaxerxes
II in the first half of the fourth century. Many others place the time of the composition in the
second half; that is, 350–300 B.C. Still others, like Pfeiffer, make it as late as 250 or even 200
B.C. Supposing that the testimony of 1 Chron. 3 (according to a variant attested by the
Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac) points to eleven generations after the time of Zerubbabel, W.
Rudolph assigned the nucleus of Chronicles to a period around 400–380 B.C. This was later
supplemented by material too varied and contradictory to have proceeded from a single editor
(Wilhelm Rudolph, Chronikbucher, 1955).
As already suggested, one of the most frequently used arguments in favor of the late authorship
of Chronicles is to be found in 1 Chron. 3:19–24, which according to the MT indicates six
generations after Zerubbabel. But actually, as Young points out, the listings in Chronicles do not
always give straight series of successive generations from father to son, but some of them
include several sons born to the parent previously named. In this particular instance it is possible
that the genealogy is carried on only to the second generation after Zerubbabel. The text
indicates that Hananiah was the son of Zerubbabel, and that Pelatiah and Jeshaiah were merely
his grandsons. None of the names following these (from v. 21 and thereafter) have anything to do
with the genealogy of Zerubbabel; hence this verse can hardly be regarded as furnishing real
support for a late date of composition.
For some reason, another verse which is often referred to as proving a late date is 1 Chron. 29:7,
which mentions a sum of money in darics (adarkōnɩ̄m). Since the daric apparently received its
name from Darius 1 (522–485 B.C.), its mention in connection with the time of King David must
be regarded as anachronistic. At the same time it must be conceded that darics had for many
decades been in circulation before Ezra’s time, and there would be no difficulty in his referring
to them as a current unit of exchange. Since the daric represented a well-known weight in gold,
there is no particular reason why Ezra could not have computed the amount of bullion actually
contributed by the Israelite princes for the service of the temple and then have converted the sum
into an equivalent number of darics as more meaningful to the public of Ezra’s own generation.

Sources of Chronicles

Well over half the material contained in Chronicles is paralleled by other books in the Old
Testament, especially Genesis, Samuel, and Kings. The author mentions many of his
extracanonical sources by name: It is much disputed whether the Chronicler actually copied from
Samuel and Kings; most authorities assume that he did so (cf. New Bible Commentary). Others,
like Zoeckler (in Lange’s Commentary, pp. 18–20) and E. J. Young (IOT, pp. 384–85), believe
that he copied from common earlier sources, but that differences in detail and arrangement
preclude the possibility of any direct borrowing.

EXTRACANONICAL SOURCES OF CHRONICLES

Source Scripture

Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel 2 Chron. 16:11; 35:27

Story of the Book of the Kings 1 Chron. 9:1

Words of Uzziah composed by Isaiah 2 Chron. 32:32

Words of Shemaiah the Prophet 2 Chron. 12:15

and of Iddo the Seer 2 Chron. 13:22

 Midrash of the Prophet Iddo 2 Chron. 9:29; 13:22

Words of Jehu the son of Hanani 2 Chron. 20:34

Words of Horzai (or the seer) 2 Chron. 33:18, 19

Book of Nathan the prophet 1 Chron. 29:29

Historical Reliability of Chronicles

There has been a tendency among Liberal critics to challenge the reliability of nearly every
statement in Chronicles which is not also found in Samuel or Kings. Such skepticism is
altogether unjustified, inasmuch as the Chronicler cites many sources which are not mentioned in
Samuel or Kings and which therefore would be apt to include information not discoverable in the
latter. It is noteworthy also that these additional items by and large conform to the basic purposes
of the book as outlined in the opening paragraph of this chapter. Thus the concern for religious
institutions, as essential for the perpetuating of a true theocracy, leads to a mention of the temple
musicians and singers, the priestly genealogies, and cultic developments of various sorts. So also
the concern for great decisions of faith leads to inclusion of additional information about kings
and prophets who had these decisions to confront. Thus there is also mention of Rehoboam
facing Shishak’s invasion and Asa confronting Zerah the Ethiopian; the attempt of Uzziah to
attain security by a large standing army and ambitious mercantile enterprises; the latter-day
repentance of Mannasseh; the great national Passover of Josiah, and so on. Additional
information is given concerning the prophets Samuel, Gad, Nathan, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Hanani,
Jehu, and even Elijah. Other prophets are referred to who do not appear elsewhere in Scripture:
Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, Iddo, the two prophets named Oded, and also Jehaziel and Eliezer.
True to his basic principles, the Chronicler omits from the time of David onward all that is not
strictly connected with the Davidic dynasty, inasmuch as that was the only valid line for the
theocracy. Thus the crimes of David, Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah, and Solomon are largely
omitted because they contributed nothing of significance to the upbuilding or preservation of the
theocracy. So also the Northern Kingdom is alluded to only as it came in contact with the
kingdom of Judah, because the Ten Tribes had no valid king ruling over them by God’s
authority, and because they upheld a heretical schism which largely cut them off from worship at
the Jerusalem temple.
If it is true that the genealogies in this book are often sketchy and incomplete, it may well be that
the author assumed other sources of knowledge (both Samuel and Kings and the noncanonical
books) were usually accessible and well known to his public. Thus in 2 Chron. 26:17 and 31:10
Jehoiada and two Azariahs are omitted. Of course we cannot rule out completely the possibility
that subsequent copyists of Ezra’s manuscript inadvertently omitted some of these names. W. J.
Beecher (in ISBE) suggested that perhaps the Chronicler had recourse to fragmentary clay
tablets, ostraca, and papyri, and that in some cases he copied them just as they were, failing to
indicate the gaps or lacunae by dots and dashes as modern copyists would have done.
There are several indications of careless transmission of the text of Chronicles. Thus we find a
goodly number of differences in the spelling of names, as compared with the spelling found in
Genesis, Samuel, and Kings. Some of these errors are easily explained by the mistaking of
similar letters for each other such as daleth (the letter d) and rēsh (the letter r). “Dodanim” in
Gen. 10:4 appears as “Rodanim” in 1 Chron. 1:7 (ASV). (In this particular instance the spelling
in Chronicles seems superior, since the probable reference is to the inhabitants of Rhodes.) Or
again, mēm is confused with hē in “Abijah,” the Chronicler’s spelling for “Abijam” (although in
this case the two letters never resembled each other in appearance). Since the vowel points were
not supplied by Jewish scribes until A.D. 600 or later, we should not be surprised at discrepancies
in the vowels contained by these divergent proper names.
Inferiority in textual transmission also appears in the numerals given in statistical statements.
Liberal critics have tried to show a consistent tendency on the part of the Chronicler to
exaggerate the numbers wherever a discrepancy occurs between Chronicles and Kings. This is
alleged to represent a consistent policy of glorifying the past by deliberate exaggeration. Actual
check of the textual data, however, indicates the unsoundness of these conclusions. In the vast
number of instances where numerical values are given in Chronicles, Kings, and Samuel, they
are in perfect agreement. There are only eighteen or twenty examples of discrepancy. Of these
about one-third involving precisely the same statistics display a larger number in Samuel or
Kings than in Chronicles (cf. 1 Chron. 11:11 and 2 Sam. 23:8; 1 Chron. 21:5b and 2 Sam. 24:9b;
2 Chron. 3:16b and 1 Kings 7:20b, cf. v. 42; 2 Chron. 8:10 and 1 Kings 9:23; 2 Chron. 36:9 and
2 Kings 24:8). Often the discrepancy is of a very minor character in so far as numbers are
concerned, and the great majority of them are explainable as not referring to precisely the same
group of people or things at precisely the same time or in precisely the same category.
Occasionally the figure given in Chronicles is lower and more credible than that in the parallel
passage. For example, the number of horse stalls Solomon built is stated by 1 Kings 4:26 to have
been 40,000, but the number appears as 4,000 in 2 Chron. 9:25. Or again, the number of enemies
the battle hero Jashobeam slew in a single engagement is given as 300 in 1 Chron. 11:11 but 800
in 2 Sam. 23:8 (ASV, marg.).
In dealing with this matter of numerical discrepancy, we must take account of the type of
notation used in ancient times. Keil points out that practically all the suspiciously high numbers
are expressed in thousands as if they were round numbers based upon the approximate estimate
of contemporaries. He suggests that the numbers themselves were undoubtedly expressed by
alphabetic letters and in that form were most liable to corruption by later copyists, especially
where they had to deal with a manuscript that was worn and smudged. (It is interesting to note
that the earliest Jewish currency, certainly from the time of the First Revolt in A.D. 67, if not
from the Hasmonean period in the second century B.C., employed alphabetic letters for numbers,
especially in the recording of dates.) Thus exaggerated figures like 50,070 recorded by 1 Samuel
6:19 as the number slain by the Lord at Beth-shemesh are to be explained by a garbling of the
digits. Note that the alphabetic system of numerical notation needed only a few dots above or
below to multiply by one thousand; thus the letter nun with two dots above it would signify
50,000 (cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch, Hebrew Grammar, 5:1).
The discovery of the Elephantine Papyri, however, gives rise to the possibility that while the
Hebrews used a numerical notation system to indicate large numbers, they may have used
vertical or horizontal strokes rather than alphabetic letters. In these papyri, for example, the
digits up to ten are indicated by vertical strokes with a special sign for the number five. The
numbers ten and above are indicated by horizontal strokes; and there are special signs for
hundreds and thousands derived from the initial letter of names of these numbers. In the light of
all this evidence it is impossible to construct an airtight case proving any original discrepancy
between the autograph manuscript of Chronicles and the relevant passages in the other canonical
books. It is safe to say that all the so-called discrepancies that have been alleged are capable of
resolution either textual criticism or by contextual exegesis.
We should not close this discussion without mentioning one interesting observation from W. F.
Albright. He states that the critics were mistaken in regarding the Chronicler to be in error in
tracing the musical guilds of the temple back to King David. “We can now say with entire
confidence that the principal musical guilds traced their origin back to Canaanite times long
before David. The Canaanites of the second millennium had developed music to a high point, as
we know from Egyptian sources, which often refer to Canaanite musical instruments and portray
Canaanite musicians. The names of the putative founders of these guilds, Heman, Ethan
(Jeduthun), Asaph, are demonstrably of the Canaanite type, and the proverbial wise men, Calcol
(ASV) and Darda, associated with them in 1 Kings 4:31, bear names of a type particularly
common among musicians.” Thus, Calcol appears in a thirteenth-century Egyptian inscription
recently discovered at Megiddo, as the name of a great Canaanite musician at Ashkelon.

Ezra and Nehemiah

The name Ezra seems to be an Aramaic form of the Hebrew ˓ezer, “help.” The name Nehemiah,
Hebrew Neḥem-Yah, means “The Comfort of Yahweh.” These two books are treated as one by
the Hebrew scribes; there is no gap in the MT between the end of Ezra 10 and the
commencement of Neh. 1, and the verse statistics are given for both at the end of Nehemiah. The
theme of this composite book is a record of the reconstruction of the Hebrew theocracy upon the
physical and spiritual foundations of the past. As God protected His remnant from the hatred of
external foes, so also He delivered them from the insidious corruption of the false brethren
within the commonwealth.

Outline of Ezra and Nehemiah

I. First return of the exiles, Ezra 1:1–2:70

II. Restoration of the worship of Jehovah, 3:1–6:22

III. Second return under Ezra, 7:1–10:44

IV. Restoration of the city walls, Neh 1:1–7:73

V. Reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, 8:1–13:31

As was mentioned in the chapter on the canon, Ezra and Nehemiah were regarded as a single
book by the earliest authorities, such as Josephus, who gave the number of the Old Testament
books as twenty-two. Christian authorities like Melito of Sardis (quoted by Eusebius) and Jerome
followed this same tradition. The LXX also grouped the two books as one, calling the canonical
Ezra-Nehemiah Esdras B or 2 Esdras, in contradistinction to the apocryphal 1 Esdras. The
Vulgate, however, divided them into 1 Ezra and 2 Ezra. The soundness of this division appears
from the duplicate list of returning Jews as recorded in Ezra 2 and Neh. 7, for it is difficult to
imagine why the same list should have been given twice in the same original work.

Authorship and Date of Ezra and Nehemiah

On the assumption that Artaxerxes mentioned in Ezra 7:1 was Artaxerxes I Longimanus, Ezra’s
arrival at Jerusalem must have occurred in 457 B.C. (the seventh year of the king, Ezra 7:8). Thus
Ezra’s career at Jerusalem commenced twelve years before that of Nehemiah, who did not come
until the twentieth year, or 445 B.C. Ezra himself undoubtedly wrote most of the book named
after him. (Note the use of I in Ezra 7–10.) But he evidently incorporated into the final edition
the personal memoirs of Nehemiah (i.e., the book of Nehemiah) including even his form of the
list of returnees. Using Nehemiah’s library facilities, Ezra probably composed Chronicles during
this same period.
As already suggested, Albright formerly placed Ezra in the reign of Artaxerxes II Mnemon, 404–
359; but this theory would render passages like Neh. 8:2 quite spurious, since they mention Ezra
as Nehemiah’s contemporary. It would also conflict with the evidence of the Elephantine Papyri,
which mention the high priest Johanan and Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. This Johanan was
a grandson of the Eliashib mentioned in Neh. 3:1 and 20, and Nehemiah was a contemporary of
Eliashib. It therefore follows that when the biblical record speaks of Nehemiah going to
Jerusalem in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Neh. 1:1) and again in his thirty-second year
(Neh. 13:6), the reference must be to Artaxerxes I (yielding the date 445 and 433 respectively)
rather than the reign of Artaxerxes II (which would result in the dates 384 and 372
respectively—far too late for the high priesthood of Johanan).
It is interesting to note that in his most recent pronouncement on the subject, Albright receded
somewhat from his earlier position. He said: “We are very unsatisfactorily informed about the
date of Ezra. The most recent evidence favors a date for Ezra’s mission in or about the thirty-
seventh year of Artaxerxes; that is, about 428 B.C.E. It is not clear whether Nehemiah was in
Jerusalem at the time; he is not specifically mentioned in the Ezra memoirs proper; the evidence
is conflicting. There can, however, be little doubt that his influence was directly responsible for
the royal rescript giving Ezra extensive powers in connection with his plan to reform the
religious organization at Jerusalem.”
More recently John Bright has defended this “thirty-seventh year” theory on the following
grounds.
1. If Ezra had really arrived in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, it would have meant that thirteen
years had elapsed before he, whose express purpose in coming to Jerusalem had been to teach
the Torah (Ezra 7:10), got around to reading the Torah to the people (as recorded in Neh. 8:1–8).
Yet Neh. 8 only records a solemn reading of the law in a public meeting on the occasion of the
Feast of Tabernacles. It by no means implies that Ezra had not been diligently teaching the law to
smaller groups of disciples and Levites during the preceding twelve years.
2. If Ezra’s reforms, as listed in Ezra 9 and 10, really preceded those of Nehemiah, then we are
forced to “the conclusion that Ezra in one way or another failed.” Presumably, therefore, these
reforms of Ezra (regarding intermarriage with the heathen) must have been contemporaneous
with those of Nehemiah (who took corrective measures regarding usury in chap. 5, and in chap.
13 regarding the temple quarters improperly granted to Tobiah the Ammonite, the neglect of the
payment of tithes, the desecration of the sabbath, and intermarriage with foreign women). But it
should be noted that it is only the evil of mixed marriages which was dealt with by both Ezra (ca.
457 B.C.) and Nehemiah (ca. 434). It is naive to suppose that in an interval of twenty-three years,
this abuse could not have normally arisen again, so as to require renewed attention on
Nehemiah’s part. It is altogether unwarranted, therefore, to describe this as a “failure.”
3. When Ezra first came to Jerusalem, it is alleged, he found the city “inhabited and relatively
secure,” whereas Nehemiah found it “largely in ruins.” Nowhere does Nehemiah state that
Jerusalem was not inhabited or that it was largely in ruins. What it does explain is that the walls
of the city had not been successfully restored and that the gates had been burned with fire (Neh.
1:3–4). The same was true of both Berlin and London after the Second World War; yet who
would deduce from this that those cities were not inhabited?
The unhappy tidings concerning the walls and gates came to Nehemiah as a sore disappointment
(Neb. 1:3–4) and could have had no reference to the Chaldean destruction way back in 587 B.C.
141 years earlier. It seems clear therefore, an effort must have been made, undoubtedly under the
leadership of Ezra, to rebuild the walls and the gates and it had been thwarted by the hostile
action of Judah’s enemies who lived nearby and later who threatened Nehemiah himself when he
came back to do the job.
Nehemiah had to bring pressure upon the outlying cities to contribute more population for the
proper maintenance and defense of the newly fortified capital (chap. 11), but this was a measure
dictated by military considerations. The record in the book of Ezra nowhere implies that the old
city limits of Jerusalem were completely repopulated in his day. It seems altogether likely that
the hostile neighbors—the Samaritans, Amonites, Edomites, etc.—had been responsible for the
destruction of the efforts of rebuilding which had begun under Ezra’s leadership. Ezra apparently
had received permission to rebuild the walls and gates, (cf. Ezra 9:9). Ezra, of course, had no
adequate army troops to ward off aggression—such as Nehemiah was later able to field against
the enemy.
4. The fact that Neh. 12:26 lists the name of Nehemiah before that of Ezra is supposed to prove
that he preceded Ezra in point of time. But quite obviously the reason his name was mentioned
first is that he was the head of the state, as governor appointed by Artaxerxes, and therefore
outranked Ezra, who was only the spiritual leader of the community.
5. It should be observed that the supposition that “seventh year” in Ezra 7:7 was an error for
“thirty-seventh year” is greatly embarrassed by the fact that Nehemiah’s reforms of chapter 13
were apparently carried out in the “thirty-second year” of Artaxerxes (Neh 13:6). It seems far
more improbable that the measures against intermarriage with idolaters would have to be
repeated by Ezra within the short space of five years after Nehemiah had dealt with this problem
in 445–444, than that Nehemiah should have faced the issue anew twenty-three years after Ezra’s
reform.
The only reasonable conclusion which remains, therefore, is that Ezra returned in 458 or 457
B.C., and that Nehemiah’s first governorship came in 445, and his second in 433. This alone does
justice to all the testimony of the biblical texts themselves.

Critical Objections to the Historicity and Authenticity of Ezra and

Nehemiah

1. In order to show a late third-century date (or even later), many critics have made use of two
names mentioned incidentally in these books, that of Johanan (Ezra 10:6) and of Jaddua (Neh.
12:11). As has been suggested, Johanan was the “son” of the Eliashib who was mentioned as
Nehemiah’s contemporary in Neh. 3:1. Now the Elephantine Papyri mention a high priest
Johanan who was the grandson of Eliashib and who lived somewhat later than Nehemiah’s time.
E. J. Young raises some question (IOT, p. 375) as to whether the Johanan of Ezra 10:6 (into
whose apartment Ezra went in order to mourn and fast) was the same one as the grandson of
Eliashib. He feels it more likely that he was the son of the Eliashib mentioned in Neh. 13:4 and
7, rather than a grandson (although the Hebrew ben can indicate the third generation as well as
the second). On the other hand, Young concedes, he might have been the grandson who in his
younger years had not yet attained the high priestly status; nevertheless as a member of the high
priestly family he might have been expected to have an apartment assigned to him in the temple
precincts.

KINGS OF MEDO-PERSIA

King Date (B.C.)

Cyrus II 558–529

Cambyses II 529–523

Pseudo-Smerids 523–522

Darius I 522–485

Xerxes I 485–464

Artaxerxes I 464–424

Darius II 423–406

Artaxexerxes II 404–359
More serious objections to the historical accuracy of Nehemiah arise from the mention of
Jaddua. Josephus (Antiquities 11.8.4) states that the name of the high priest at the time of
Alexander the Great in 330 B.C. was Jaddua, and the inference has therefore been drawn that the
mention of him in Neh. 12:11 betrays the fact that Nehemiah must have been composed long
after the time of the historical Nehemiah himself. The facts are as follows. The high priestly line
beginning with the time of the return from exile in 536 B.C. included the following succession:
Jeshua, the father of Joiakim, the father of Eliashib, the father of Jehoiada or Joiada, the father of
Jonathan and Johanan (younger contemporaries of Nehemiah, Neh. 13:28) and then Jaddua, the
son of Jonathan (Neh. 12:11). If Johanan was twenty years of age in 456, he would have been
sixty-eight by the time Elephantine Letter No. 30 (the Cowley edition) was written. If Eliashib
was twenty-five when Jehoiada was born and fifty when Johanan was born, then he would have
been eighty by 446 and still have been able to furnish leadership in the building of the priests’
section of the Jerusalem wall. It follows that Jaddua could hardly have been born later than 420
or 410 B.C., and he would therefore have been anywhere from eighty to ninety by the time of
Alexander the Great. E. J. Young therefore suggests that Nehemiah may have lived to see Jaddua
in his youth. On the other hand, it is quite possible, as R. D. Wilson points out (ISBE, p. 1084a),
that Josephus’s account is not altogether trustworthy. In the same chapter Josephus speaks of the
demonstrably fifth-century characters Sanballat and Manasseh as being with Jaddua, and this
leads to the suspicion that Josephus somehow garbled his sources and involved himself in
anachronisms. It may therefore have been a descendant of Jaddua who actually greeted
Alexander the Great when he entered Jerusalem. In any event, the evidence above cited is by no
means strong enough to overthrow the historical credibility of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
2. Some critics have pointed to another expression as a betrayal of a late date of composition:
“Darius the Persian” (Neh. 12:22). The argument runs that since Darius was described as a
Persian, this would indicate an author living in the Greek period, after Alexander’s conquest of
Asia. This however is by no means a necessary conclusion. He may well have been so designated
to distinguish him from the earlier Darius the Mede referred to in Dan. 6.
Similarly, the title “the king of Persia,” which is found in Ezra 1:1 and other passages, has been
condemned by some authorities as unhistorical for the Persian period. More recent investigation,
however, has shown that the title “the king of Persia” was employed by at least eighteen different
authors in nineteen different documents and in thirty eight different references dating from the
Persian period, and that, too, in reference to at least six different Persian kings. There are few
other “scholarly” objections which have been so thoroughly refuted by archaeology as this one.
3. Objections have been raised on the ground of variations discoverable in the two copies of the
decree of Cyrus, the Hebrew version in Ezra 1 and the Aramaic version in Ezra 6. But it should
be observed that the edict recorded in Ezra 6 was found in Ecbatana in Persia, whereas that of
Ezra 1 was promulgated in Babylon. It is legitimate to infer that the Aramaic copy was a file
abstract of the edict for preservation in the archives; the Hebrew form doubtless represented the
actual wording as it was delivered to the Jews themselves. It is interesting to observe that it
shows a deference to the God of the Jews quite similar to that deference which Cyrus expressed
to Marduk of the Babylonians when he promulgated an edict of religious freedom for the
Babylonian populace (cf. Pritchard, ANET, p. 316).
4. It was formerly thought that the Aramaic portions of Ezra (i.e., the correspondence and
decrees recorded in chaps. 4–7) reflected a later period of Aramaic than that which a fifth-
century author would have used. But as Albright points out (in Alleman and Flack, p. 154), the
Elephantine Papyri demonstrate that the Aramaic of Ezra is indeed characteristic of the fifth
century (apart from the few modernized spellings) and that the letters which Ezra quotes are very
similar in style and language to those emanating from fifth-century Egypt. He goes on to say,
“The still unpublished letters in Mittwoch’s hands will add substantially to the number of
parallels and will deal the coup de grace to Toffey’s view that there are numerous Greek words
in the Aramaic of Ezra.”
5. Objection has been raised to apparent anachronisms in Ezra 4, which passes from a reference
to Cyrus the Great (558–529) to Xerxes (485–464) to Artaxerxes I (464–424), and then to Darius
I (522–485). It is urged that such confusion in the order of monarchs could only arise in a late
production in which the author had forgotten the true succession of kings. But this conclusion
cannot successfully be maintained in the light of internal evidence. It is perfectly apparent from
Ezra 4:5 that the author was aware that King Darius reigned between Cyrus and Xerxes “to
frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus … even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. And
in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote they an accusation against the
inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem” (ASV). A careful study of the chapter reveals that verses 5–
23 constitute a long parenthesis dealing not with the building of the temple but rather with the
erection of the walls of the city. This material is introduced at this point simply to indicate the
malignity of Judah’s adversaries. We are not to understand the opposition of Rehum and
Shimshai as arising in the 520s, but rather in the late 460s, early in the reign of Artaxerxes I. In
4:24 the narrative is brought back to the point at which verse 3 had left it, that is, at the time
when the temple had not yet been rebuilt. In other words, we are not to understand Ezra’s
purpose here as a strictly chronological account, but rather a history of the opposition to the
building of the city walls from the time of Cyrus to the reign of Artaxerxes. He follows a topical
order rather than chronological. Since the letter quoted in 4:11–16 makes no reference at all to
the rebuilding of the temple, but only to the erection of the walls, it is quite evident that the
temple had already been completed (an event which took place in 516 B.C.) and that the reference
here is to an attempt made in the beginning of Artaxerxes’ reign to hinder the repair of the
fortifications of Jerusalem itself.
6. Some writers hold that the reference to Greek drachmas in Neh. 7:71 (darkemōnɩ̂ m, Hebrew) is
evidence of authorship during the Greek period. But as J. P. Free points out (ABH, p. 253),
Greek drachmas have been discovered at the Persian level of the excavations at Beth-zur.
Apparently the enterprising merchantmen of Hellas had extended trade relations even to the Near
East by the fifth century B.C. W. F. Albright (IBL, Uune 1942], p. 126) refers to the evidence of
the Elephantine Papyri for the existence of the drachma standard even in Egypt at that period.

Esther

The name ˒Estēr is apparently derived from the Persian word for star, stara. Esther’s Hebrew
name was H˓dassâ (from hâdassâ, meaning “myrtle.” The theme of this short book is an
illustration of the overruling providence of the sovereign God who delivers and preserves His
people from the malice of the heathen who would plot their destruction. Although there is no
explicit mention of the name of God, in this book, nothing could be clearer than the irresistible
power of His omnipotent rule, watching over His covenant people, preserving them from the
malignity of Satan in his vain attempt to work through Haman and accomplish the annihilation of
the Jewish nation.
While it is not easy to account for the absence of God’s name in this narrative; the best
explanation available is that the account deals principally with those Jews who had passed up
their opportunity of returning to the land of promise and chose to remain among the Gentiles
after the return of the faithful remnant in 536 B.C. It is certain that all the acts of this gripping
drama take place in Gentile territory; it is also certain that the overruling providence of God is
definitely implied in 4:14: “For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then will relief
and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place … and who knoweth whether thou art not
come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (ASV).

Outline of Esther

I. The feast of Ahasuerus and the divorce of Vashti, 1:1–22

II. Choice of Esther as queen, 2:1–23

III. Haman’s plot to destroy Mordecai and the Jews, 3:1–15

IV. Mordecai’s persuasion of Esther to intervene, 4:1–17

V. Esther’s successful petition to the king, 5:1–7:10

VI. Downfall of Haman and deliverance of the Jews, 8:1–9:16

VII. Feast of Purim, 9:17–32

VIII. Conclusion: the prominence of Mordecai, 10:1–3

Esther: Authorship and Date

The text itself fails to indicate either the author or the date of composition. The Jewish
authorities record the tradition (as old as Josephus and repeated by Ibn Ezra) that Mordecai was
the author of the book, but the way in which Mordecai is referred to in 10:2–3 suggests that his
career was already finished. Other possible authors might be Ezra or Nehemiah, but for either of
these there is no good linguistic evidence, judging from the style or diction of the three books
concerned.
As to the date, the terminus a quo is the death of Xerxes (464 B.C.), since 10:2 seems to imply
that his reign is finished. The latest terminus ad quem is prior to 330 B.C. since there are no traces
of Greek influence either in language or in thought to be discovered in Esther. The most likely
date of composition is somewhere in the latter half of the fifth century (so E. J. Young). Whoever
the author may have been, he shows such intimate knowledge of Persian customs and of the
fifth-century historical situation that he may well have lived in Persia and been an eyewitness of
the events recorded.

Opposition to the Historicity of Esther

1. Rationalist critics have made much of the failure of secular records to contain any mention of
Queen Esther. According to Herodotus, Xerxes’s queen during this period, that is, from the
seventh year of his reign (Est. 2:16), was named Amestris, the daughter of a Persian named
Otanes (7.61). It is stated that she brutally mutilated the mother of Artaynta, a paramour of
Xerxes (9.112) and that also upon one occasion she had fourteen noble Persian youths buried
alive as a thank offering to a god of the netherworld (7.113). Certainly the Persian origin of
Amestris and her sadistic brutality exclude any possibility of her being identified with Esther—
unless Herodotus has preserved a very garbled and erroneous tradition. It should be recognized
that in the following details there is satisfactory agreement between the accounts of Esther and
Herodotus: (a) it was in the third year of his reign, 483 B.C., that Xerxes convoked an assembly
of his nobles to plan an expedition against Greece—an occasion which might well have given
rise to the feast mentioned in Est. 1:3 (cf. Herodotus 7.7); (b) it was in his seventh year (479 B.C.)
that Esther was made queen (Est. 2:16), which would correspond to the year Xerxes returned
from his defeat at Salamis and sought consolation in his harem (Herodotus 9.108). After the
violent clash with Amestris over the Artaynta affair, Xerxes may well have chosen a new
favorite as his acting queen. So far as Vashti is concerned, it is true that Herodotus makes no
mention of her; yet it should be borne in mind that Herodotus omitted many important people
and events in his account. (It should be remembered, for example, that on the basis of
Herodotus’s omission, modern scholars used to deny the existence of Belshazzar, until
subsequent archaeological discovery verified the historicity of Dan. 5.)
2. On the basis of Est. 2:5–6 some critics have alleged that the author must have regarded Xerxes
as a near successor to King Nebuchadnezzar, since he implies that Mordecai was carried off in
the deportation of Jehoiachin in 597 and yet was still very much alive in the reign of Xerxes
(485–464 B.C.). But this deduction is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of the Hebrew text;
the true antecedent of the relative pronoun who in verse 6 is not Mordecai himself but rather
Kish, his great-grandfather. If it was Kish who was Jehoiachin’s contemporary, as the author
implies, three generations would have elapsed by the time of Mordecai—a proper interval
between 597 and 483.
3. An objection has been raised to Est. 1:1 on the ground that 127 was a number much too high
for the provinces under Xerxes’s rule, since Herodotus states that the empire was then divided
into twenty satrapies. But it is by no means certain that the Hebrew term medɩ̂ nah (“province”)
represented the same administrative unit as the Greek satrapeia; in all probability the medɩ̂ nah
was a mere subdivision of it. Thus in Ezra 2:1 Judah is referred to as medɩ̂ nah or “subdivision” of
what Herodotus itemizes as the fifth satrapy, Syria. Even the number of satrapies was by no
means stable, for in the Behistun Rock inscription the empire is said to be composed of twenty-
one satrapies, and then later in the same inscription, twenty-three, and later still, twenty-nine.
Herodotus himself states that there were about sixty nations under the Persian rule. In view of all
this evidence, it is premature for anyone to state categorically that the Persian empire could not
have been divided into 127 medɩ̂ not in the time of Xerxes.
4. It has also been objected that the armed Jews could not possibly have killed as many as 75,000
enemies in the Persian empire in so short a time as a single day (as Est. 9:16–17 asserts), nor
would the Persian government ever have permitted such slaughter. It is, however, most
precarious reasoning to insist that the unusual is equivalent to the impossible. In the light of the
peculiar situation brought about by Haman’s plot to destroy the entire Jewish nation, and the
careful equipping of the Jews with arms to destroy their foes, it is by no means incredible that the
Jews could have encountered and overcome such a large number of foes. Moreover, the ancient
historians abundantly testify that the Persian government had a remarkably callous attitude
toward human life and that where a member of the royal family was involved, they were known
to be altogether unsparing in their severity.
5. Doubts have been raised by many authors as to the historicity of Mordecai, and advocates of
the late-date theory have labeled Esther as a mere romance intended to bolster nationalistic self-
esteem and improve the morale of the oppressed and downtrodden Jewish people. But more
recently those scholars who formerly rejected the entire account as fictitious have been forced to
revise their conclusions in the light of an inscription published by Ungnad mentioning a certain
Marduk-ai-a as an official in Susa during the reign of Xerxes. In fact, the name Mardukai has
been found frequently in Late Babylonian inscriptions (as might well be expected of a name
signifying “Man of Marduk”—the tutelary god of Babylon itself).
6. As for doubts concerning the historicity of Haman the Agagite, it is significant that an
inscription of Sargon has been published by Oppert which mentions Agag as a district in the
Persian empire. In the light of this evidence, it is apparent that Haman was a native of this
province (rather than a descendant of the Amalekite king, Agag, as late Jewish tradition has
supposed; cf. ISBE, p. 1008a).

POST-EXILIC FEASTS

Feast Date Significance Source

Purim Adar 13–15 Deliverance of Jewish Est. 9:24–32

race from genocide
(Plotted by Haman in
the reign of Xerxes)

Feast of Kislev 25 Rededication of the 1 Macc. 4:52–59

Dedication Jerusalem Temple 2 Macc. 10:5–8
Cleansed by
 Maccabean patriots in
165 B.C.

Impressive confirmation of the historical accuracy of the author of Esther has been found in an
inscription of Artaxerxes II which states that the palace of Xerxes was destroyed by fire in the
reign of Artaxerxes I. This would mean that within thirty years of the time of Esther, the palace
in which she lived would have been destroyed, and in the natural course of events, a recollection
of it would have passed away. It is difficult to suppose that any late romancer would have had
any knowledge of a building which had been destroyed so long before his own time. Excavations
of French archaeologists have uncovered the remains of this palace and show that it agrees
perfectly in ground plan with the structure presupposed in the book of Esther (cf. ISBE, p.
1009a).
In conclusion, it should be observed that there is no other reasonable explanation for the historic
fact of the Feast of Purim as observed among the Jews except that such a remarkable deliverance
of the nation from extinction actually took place in history. There would have been absolutely no
motive for manufacturing such a story as this unless it was based upon an actual occurrence. The
name Purim is unimpeachably authentic, for the term puru, meaning “lot,” has been discovered
in Assyrian inscriptions.

31
Post-exilic Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah,
Malachi

Haggai

THE NAME ḥaggay means “festal” derived from ḥag, “festival.” Possibly the prophet received
this name because he was born on the Feast of the Passover or some other major feast. The
theme of his prophecy is that if God’s people will put first His program, His house, and His
worship, then their present poverty and failure will give way to a blessed prosperity
commensurate with their covenant faithfulness.
 Outline of Haggai

I. First message: neglect of the temple is the cause of economic depression, 1:1–15

II. Second message: though less pretentious, the second temple will be more glorious than the
first, 2:1–9

III. Third message: unholiness vitiates sacrifice, selfishness leads to crop failure, 2:10–19

IV. Fourth message: God will finally triumph, 2:20–23

Date and Authorship of Haggai

Of all the books of the Old Testament, this one enjoys the unusual status of being uncontested by
all critics of every persuasion. It is acknowledged to be the work of the prophet Haggai himself,
and the date it assigns to each message is accepted as reliable. The first message was delivered
on the first of Elul (Aug-Sept) in the second year of Darius, or 520 B.C.; the second message
came on the twenty-first of Tishri (Sept-Oct) in the same year; the third and fourth messages
were both given on the twenty-fourth of Chislev (Dec-Jan) in the same year. All four sermons,
then, were delivered within three months of each other.

Historical Background of Haggai

This was a time of severe testing of faith for the remnant that had recently returned from
Babylon. The hostile intrigues of Judah’s adversaries during the reign of Cyrus had arrested the
rebuilding of the temple fourteen years before. Nothing had been done on the project since that
time, even though a new king, Darius, the son of Hystaspes, had ascended the throne in 522. The
influential members of the Jewish community were content to leave the expensive undertaking
incomplete while they spent their money on building comfortable mansions for themselves. But
repeated crop failure had come as a warning to them all that they had sinned in using political
opposition as an excuse for neglecting the sanctuary of the Lord. In Ezra 5:1–2, we read: “Now
the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that
were in Judah and in Jerusalem; in the name of the God of Israel prophesied they unto them”
(ASV). Alongside this should be placed Ezra 6:14–15: “And the elders of the Jews builded, and
they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo.…
And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of
the reign of Darius the king” (516 B.C.). As Marcus Dods comments: “No prophet ever appeared
at a more critical juncture in the history of a people, and it may be added, no prophet was more
successful.”
From the perspective of our own time, it may be questioned whether the issue of completing the
temple was as vital as these prophets represented it to be; in the Christian era we are accustomed
to having no central sanctuary. But it should be remembered that much of the Mosaic
constitution presupposed the carrying on of worship in such a sanctuary, and the failure to
complete a suitable house of worship could lead to a paralyzing of the religious life of the Jewish
community. It should also be understood that the second temple was to play a very important
role in the history of redemption, for it was in this temple (as remodeled and beautified by Herod
the Great) that the Lord Jesus Christ was to carry on His Jerusalem ministry. It was, of course,
His advent that fulfilled the promise of Hag. 2:9, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater
than of the former.”

Zechariah

The name Zekar-Yah means “Jehovah has remembered” (i.e., presumably, the Lord has
remembered the prayers of his parents for a baby boy). The theme of his prophecy was: God is
going to preserve His remnant from all the world powers which oppress them and threaten their
extinction; these Gentile empires shall be destroyed, but Israel shall survive every ordeal to
come, because they are the people of the Messiah. It is He who shall some day establish the
kingdom and rule over all the earth after vanquishing all heathen opposition.

Outline of Zechariah

I. Messages during building of the temple, 1:1–8:23

A. First message: call for national repentance, 1:1–6
B. Second message: the eight visions, 1:7–6:15
1. Horseman among the myrtles, 1:7–17 (the sovereign God ready to intervene in the
peaceful world scene in order to bless His city and people)
2. Four horns and four smiths, 1:18–21 (Israel’s oppressors to be successively crushed:
Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome)
3. Measuring line, 2:1–13 (half desolate Jerusalem is someday to become large and
populous)
4. Joshua, symbol of the priestly nation, 3:1–10 (Israel is to be forgiven and purged by
the grace of God)
5. Candelabrum: Israel as the lamp of witness, 4:1–14 (Israel to be fed with the oil of the
Spirit by the Priest-King, Christ)
6. Flying scroll of divine judgment, 5:1–4 (a curse upon all who reject the Law and
Covenant)
7. Removal of the ephah of iniquity to Babylon, 5:5–11 (ungodliness removed from
Judah and consigned to the degenerate world from whence it came and where it
belongs)
8. Four chariots of divine judgment, 6:1–8 (death, conquest, famine and pestilence meted
out to the surrounding heathen powers)
 9. Sequel: the symbolic crown of Joshua as type of the Messianic Branch, 6:9–15
C. Third message, 7:1–8:23
1. The query about extra fasts, 7:1–3
2. The fourfold answer (godliness and obedience more important than fasts), 7:4–8:23
II. Messages after the building of the temple, 9:1–14:21
A. Burden of Hadrach (the anointed King rejected but triumphant), 9:1–11:17
1. The king announced: (the Palm Sunday entrance), 9:1–10
2. The king’s program set forth, 9:11–10:12
3. The king rejected (the good shepherd and the foolish shepherd), 11:1–17
B. The burden of Israel (the rejected King enthroned), 12:1–14:21
1. Final victories of Israel: her conflict, triumph, conversion, and sanctification, 12:1–
13:6
a) Downfall of the heathen who attack Jerusalem, 12:1–4
b) Miraculous strength of Israel to vanquish all their foes, 12:5–9
c) Repentance of latter-day Israel for the crucifixion of Christ, 12:10–14
d) Spring of cleansing water for the repentant, 13:1
e) Permanent removal of idolatry from Israel and the silencing of all false prophets,
13:2–6
2. Final victories of the King, 13:7–14:21
a) His rejection, and the purging of Israel, 13:7–9
b) Assault upon Jerusalem, and deliverance by the Lord, 14:1–8
c) Establishment of the supremacy of Judah and her King over the earth, 14:9–15
d) Millennial subjection of the nations to Christ and the holy status of millennial
Israel, 14:16–21

Authorship and Date of Zechariah

The first verse presents Zechariah as the son of Berechiah and the grandson of Iddo, who was
undoubtedly the same priest as the one mentioned in Neh. 12:4 as a contemporary of Zerubbabel.
In Zech. 2:4 the prophet is spoken of as a youth (na˓ar). He would probably have been a young
man at the time he cooperated with Haggai in the rebuilding campaign of 520 B.C. His last dated
prophecy (chap. 7) was given two years later, in 518; yet chapters 9–14 show every appearance
of having been composed some decades after that, possibly after 480 B.C. in view of the
reference to Greece (9:13). As Unger points out (IGOT, p. 355), the successful resistance of the
Greek nation to the invasion of Xerxes would naturally have brought them into a new
prominence in the eyes of all the peoples of the Near East. We have no further information
concerning Zechariah’s personal career, except the reference in Matt. 23:35, which seems to
indicate that he was martyred by mob action in the temple grounds (since the Zechariah that
Christ mentions is said to be the son of Berechiah rather than of Jehoiada, who however met his
end in a like manner back in the days of King Joash, according to 2 Chron. 24:20–21).

Critical Objections to the Unity of Zechariah

Since the rise of nineteenth-century criticism, two competing views have arisen concerning the
origin of chapters 9–14: the pre-exilic theory and the post-Alexandrian theory.
The pre-exilic theory is based upon the following considerations:
1. Since Zech. 11:12–13 is quoted in Matt. 27:9–10 as a prophecy by Jeremiah, chapter 11 as a
whole has been assigned to the time of Jeremiah or some pre-exilic contemporary of his (so
Joseph Mede in 1653). Yet we should observe that it is not quite accurate to say that Matt. 27
quotes exclusively from Zech. 11, for in certain important respects it deviates from both the MT
and the LXX form of that passage. The fulfillment to which Matthew refers pertains to the
purchasing of the potter’s field; this points to Jer. 32:6–9, which records the purchase of a field
for a certain number of shekels. Compare also Jer. 18:2, which speaks of the prophet’s watching
a potter fashion earthenware vessels in his house. Likewise Jer. 19:2 speaks of a potter employed
about the temple and having his workshop in the valley of Hinnom. In Jer. 19:11 we read: “Thus
saith the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s
vessel, that cannot be made whole again: and they shall bury them in Tophet.” Therefore we are
to understand Zechariah’s casting of the money to the potter as simply the renewal of an old
symbol dating back to the time of Jeremiah. Since Matt. 27 combines both Jeremiah (from whom
the word field has been borrowed) and Zechariah, it is only Jeremiah who is mentioned, because
he was the older and the more important of the two prophets. A direct parallel for this procedure
is found in Mark 1:2–3, where the quotation begins with Mal. 3:1 and follows with Isa. 40:3; yet
Mark refers (ASV) only to Isaiah as the source of the citation.
2. Since Zech. 9:1–2 mentions Hadrach, Damascus, and Hamath as independent countries (so the
argument runs), this passage must be dated prior to the conquest of Syria by Tiglath-pileser in
732. Actually, however, there is no necessary implication in these verses that the three Syrian
principalities mentioned were free and independent, any more than the three Philistine cities
referred to in 9:5. There is no particular reason why they could not have had a predictable future
even during the reign of Xerxes, when they were subject to the Persian empire. In the light of
subsequent history it is quite obvious that this passage contains a revelation of a judgment to
come upon these principalities at the time of the invasion by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.
3. Zechariah 11:14 envisions the possibility of establishing brotherhood between Judah and
Israel. This has been taken to imply a time of composition prior to the fall of Samaria in 722, and
probably even prior to Pekah’s alliance with Rezin of Damascus in 734. But this line of
reasoning is based upon tenuous evidence, for the northern and southern tribes were considered
by postexilic authors as reunited at the time of the restoration in 536. Thus Ezra 6:17 and 8:35
imply that many of the descendants of the Northern Kingdom returned with the remnant of
Judah, inasmuch as offerings were presented to the Lord on behalf of all twelve tribes. Moreover,
there was even in Zechariah’s time (the early fifth century) a need for the reunification of the
whole territory of the twelve tribes as a spiritual and geographical unity. The hostile attitude of
the Samaritans (who were largely the descendants of foreign settlers) presented an obstacle
toward the realization of this ideal. Zechariah 11:14 therefore looks forward to the later
unification of the whole area by the descendants of the Maccabees during the Hasmonean
dynasty.
4. Zechariah 10:10–11 refers to Assyria as an independent power; therefore, the passage must
have been written prior to 612 B.C., when Assyria fell. But actually this is an unwarranted
deduction. As the term is used here, Assyria is not intended to refer to a contemporary kingdom;
rather, it is a geographical designation employed in a futuristic, predictive context. It apparently
stands for the world power which shall be in control in the Near East during the last days, and as
such is contrasted with the southern world power of Egypt. Compare Ezra 6:22 which speaks of
Assyria as a geographical entity, without any implication that it continued to be an independent
kingdom in his time.
5. Zechariah 10:1–4 is thought to indicate a pre-exilic date because it refers to teraphim and
diviners, and post-exilic Judah witnessed no revival of idolatrous worship. But actually the
context shows that this mention of the vanity of idols and diviners refers to the experience of
Israel in ages past; by God’s providences He showed the nation the folly of trusting in idols back
in the days of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, and demonstrated that He Himself was the one true God.
Because of the encroachments of the pagan or half-pagan neighboring countries, this lesson
needed to be mentioned even in Zechariah’s day, that the Jews might be discouraged from taking
foreign wives. Ezra’s prayer of confession in Ezra 9 likewise shows a most vivid recollection of
the lessons of the past concerning the vanity of idol worship in Israel.
The pre-exilic theory was defended by the following eminent nineteenth-century scholars:
Rosenmueller, Hitzig, Baudissin, and Strack. In the twentieth century, however, this theory has
become largely discarded as obsolete in favor of a much later date of composition.
The post-Alexandrian theory, which now enjoys the widest support, rests upon the following
principal arguments:
1. Zechariah 9:13 mentions the sons of Javan, or Greece: “For I have bent Judah for me, I have
filled the bow with Ephraim; and I will stir up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and
will make thee as the sword of a mighty man” (ASV). It is argued that this reference indicates a
date when the Greeks had already entered upon the scene of Near Eastern politics, that is to say,
after the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great (ca. 330 B.C.). While this passage
purports to be a prediction of coming defeat (i.e., the defeat of the Seleucids at the hands of the
Maccabean patriots), it is most reasonably to be understood as a vaticinium ex eventu. Such a
deduction, of course, has greatest appeal for those who occupy an antisupernaturalistic position
in their philosophy. But as far as the situation in Zechariah’s own time is concerned, the defeats
recently administered by the Greeks to Xerxes at the battles of Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale in
480–479 would furnish ample cause to bring them to the attention of all the inhabitants of the
Persian empire. Therefore, unless one is prepared to rule out the possibility of predictive
prophecy on dogmatic grounds, there is no particular reason why Zechariah could not have
penned these words in the 470s.
2. Since Zech. 9:1–2 admittedly refers to provinces which were conquered by Alexander, this
naturally indicates to the rationalist school of thought that his invasion was already a matter of
history. The same line of reasoning has been applied to Zech. 11:14, with its vision of the
reunification of Judah and Israel. This would make the composition of the passage Maccabean
(e.g., around 150 B.C.). It should, however, be borne in mind that Ezra 6:17 and 8:35 establish
the fact that a theoretical reunion had already been consummated at the time of the dedication of
the second temple in 516 B.C. It was only natural, therefore, to look for the implementation of
this new unity as a future political event.
3. The references to the “good shepherd” in Zech. 11 have led advocates of the Late Date Theory
to attempt various historical identifications. According to E. Sellin, this good shepherd was the
high priest Onias III, who held office during the reign of Seleucus IV (187–175 B.C.). But
according to K. Marti, he was Onias IV (apparently the same as that brother of Onias III who
held the high priestly office for ten years and was finally put to death in the time of Judas
Maccabeus, according to 2 Macc. 13:1–8. So far as the “evil shepherd” is concerned (Zech.
11:17), he has been identified with Menelaus (apparently the same as Onias IV) by Sellin, and by
others with Alcimus, or Jakim, who was installed as high priest by King Demetrius in 161 B.C.
and who died in 159. (Alcimus is also Marti’s candidate.) As for the three shepherds of Zech.
11:8, they have been identified as Lysimachus, Jason, and Menelaus, according to Marti; or
according to Sellin, they were Simon II, Menelaus, and Lysimachus.
These highly conjectural identifications, which greatly vary among themselves, would imply a
date of composition in the neighborhood of 150 B.C. All of this procedure involves, of course, the
naive assumption that Hebrew experienced no linguistic changes whatever between the fifth
century and the second century B.C. The style and diction of Zechariah, even in chapters 9–14,
give no indication of being any later in time than Haggai or Malachi. We may now contrast with
this supposedly second-century Hebrew document the recently discovered sectarian literature
from the Qumran caves dating from the second and first centuries B.C. Linguistically they furnish
great contrasts with the Hebrew of Zechariah, which bears a much stronger affinity with the
other early fifth-century prophets.
4. In dependence upon the dogmatic theory of evolutionary development, as formulated by
Wellhausen, the advocates of the second-century date stress the apocalyptic tendency in these
chapters of Zechariah which laid a distinct emphasis upon eschatology. (According to the
evolutionary scheme, apocalypticism is regarded as the final stage of Jewish religion, a product
of the desperation to which the Jews were driven when they saw their hopes of worldly empire
disappointed and their nation kept under bondage by Gentile empires.) On these theoretical
grounds, therefore, much of the content of chapters 12–14 is assigned a very late date, because it
contains a hope of a catastrophic judgment to be visited upon the Gentiles. Yet because of
supposedly inconsistent views concerning the coming defeats and victories of Israel, even these
chapters are regarded as a composite from various late sources.
5. The literary style of Zech. 9–14 is allegedly so different from that of chapters 1–8 as to
indicate a different author. For instance, Zechariah II (chaps. 9–14) employs the phrase “thus
saith Jehovah” just once, whereas it occurs with great frequency in Zechariah I (chaps. 1–8). On
the other hand, Zechariah II uses the expression “in that day” eighteen times or more, whereas
Zechariah I employs it only three times. Moreover, the style of Zechariah II is regarded as more
poetic and full of parallelism than is the case of Zechariah 1.
In refutation of these alleged evidences of diverse authorship, it may easily be shown that there
are even more significant traits of style which are possessed in common by both sections of the
book. Of course it should be understood that no author’s style remains completely static over a
period of three or four decades. If the last six chapters of Zechariah were composed between 480
and 470 B.C., this would adequately account for the variations and contrasts listed in the previous
paragraph. The difference of mood and situation prevailing between the early period of his
ministry, when Zechariah was emphasizing that the summons to rebuild the temple really came
from God (hence the frequency of “thus says Yahweh”), and the state of affairs prevailing thirty
or forty years later, when Zechariah’s authority as a spokesman of the Lord was already well
accepted, quite adequately explains the differing frequency of the quotation formula. On the
other hand, the prophecies of Zechariah II are directed toward a much more distant future than
those of Zechariah I. It is only natural, therefore, that the eschatological phrase “in that day”
would appear more frequently in the later chapters. The earlier chapters, 1–8, deal with the more
immediate judgments upon the world powers of Persia, Greece, and Rome, rather than with the
end time.
Conservative scholars, in demonstration of the unity of authorship in Zechariah, point out the
persistence of such stylistic traits as the following:
a) “Saith Jehovah” (ne˒ūm Yahweh) occurs fourteen times in Zechariah I and six times in
Zechariah II (10:12; 12:1, 4; 13:2, 7, 8).
b) “The eyes of Yahweh,” a peculiar designation referring to God’s providence, is found twice in
Zechariah I (4:10; 8:6) and once in Zechariah II (9:8; perhaps add 12:4, “mine eyes”).
c) The divine title “Yahweh of hosts” is found three times in Zechariah I and three times in
Zechariah II.
d) The verb yāšab, “to sit, to dwell,” in the special sense of “be inhabited” is found twice in
Zechariah I and twice in Zechariah II. (Very seldom does this verb have that meaning outside of
Zechariah.)
e) There is a peculiar five-member type of parallelism which is scarcely found outside of
Zechariah, but which occurs once in Zechariah I and three times in Zechariah II (6:13; 9:5, 7;
12:4). (Cf. Young, IOT, p. 273.)
So far as the style is concerned, all scholars admit that Zechariah is remarkably free of so-called
Aramaisms; it is written in good, pure Hebrew. This is scarcely what one would expect of a work
composed in the second century B.C. as the Liberal critics maintain. As we have already pointed
out, the grammatical and stylistic peculiarities of the prose documents of the Qumran sectarians
are completely missing from Zechariah’s work.
One more observation should be made concerning the modern advocates of the post-Alexandrian
theory; that is, they markedly disagree among themselves as to the precise dating of Zechariah II
in its various component parts. Speculations range all the way from 280 to 140 B.C., depending
upon what correlations they attempt to make with episodes and historical characters connected
with Hellenistic history. This does not inspire confidence in the soundness of their methodology.

Malachi

The most reasonable explanation for the meaning of Malachi (Mal˒ākɩ̄, Hebrew) is that it is
hypocoristic for the full form Mal˒ak-Yah, or “Messenger of Jehovah.” In its abbreviated form,
the name could only mean “my messenger,” or possibly, if an adjective, “one charged with a
message.” It should be noted that many authorities have expressed uncertainty as to whether the
real name of the author has been preserved. Such doubt is grounded upon the fact that the LXX
translates 1:1 as “by the hand of his messenger” (rather than by the hand of Malachi). This
discrepancy would indicate a textual variation; the LXX must have read the final letter as w
(waw), meaning “his,” rather than the final y (yod) of the MT. On the other hand, it should be
noted that the LXX entitles the book Malakhias, or Malachi. The Targumic tradition indicates
uncertainty, since it paraphrases the first verse as “by the hand of my messenger, whose name is
called Ezra the scribe.” It should be observed that every other prophetic book in the Old
Testament bears the name of its author. It would be strange if this one were left anonymous.
Moreover, if the archetype or previous manuscript used by the LXX spelled Malachi’s name
with a longtailed yod, it could easily have been misunderstood as signifying His messenger. Even
if yod were read (as apparently the Targum of Jonathan did so read), it might well be
misconstrued as a common noun followed by the suffix my. Of course it was true that any of the
numerous Hebrew names that ended in i (such as Palti, Bukki, Buzi, etc.) could be misconstrued
as “my,” since the gentilic ending ɩ̄ happens to resemble the suffix pronoun my.
The theme of Malachi is that sincerity toward God and a holy manner of life are absolutely
essential in the Lord’s eyes, if His favor is to be bestowed upon the crops and the nation’s
economic welfare. Israel must live up to her high calling as a holy nation and wait for the coming
of the Messiah, who by a ministry of healing as well as judgment will lead the nation to a
realization of all her fondest hopes.

Outline of Malachi

I. Introductory appeal: God’s love for Israel, 1:1–5

II. Oracle against the priests for dishonoring the Lord, 1:6–2:9
A. Neglect in liturgical functions, 1:6–2:4
B. Insincere, corrupt teaching of the law, 2:5–9
III. Oracles against the laity, 2:10–4:3
A. Treachery toward God in divorce and mixed marriage, 2:10–16
B. Warning of judgment by the coming Lord, 2:17–3:6
C. Repentance in tithing will bring blessed prosperity, 3:7–12
D. Vindication of the godly against sneers of cynics in the day of the Lord, 3:13–4:3
IV. Concluding admonitions: to keep the law and wait for Christ’s coming, 4:4–6

Malachi: Authorship and Date of Composition

As indicated above, the name of the author was probably Malachi or Malachijah (the Targumic
tradition that he was Ezra is hardly worthy of consideration), and apart from that we have no
knowledge of his background or circumstances. Judging from internal evidence, it seems clear
that his prophecies were given in the second half of the fifth century, probably around 435 B.C.
We come to this conclusion from the following indications: (1) The temple had already been
rebuilt and Mosaic sacrifice reinstituted (1:7, 10; 3:1). (2) A Persian governor (or peḥah
mentioned in 1:8) was in authority at that time; hence it could not have been during either of
Nehemiah’s governorships (in 445 and 433). (3) The sins which Malachi denounces are the same
as those Nehemiah had to correct during his second term, namely, (a) priestly laxity (1:6; Neh.
13:4–9), (b) neglect of tithes, to the impoverishment of the Levites (3:7–12; cf. Neh. 13:10–13),
(c) much intermarriage with foreign women (2:10–16; cf. Neh. 13:23–28). It is reasonable to
assume that Malachi had already protested against these abuses in the years just preceding
Nehemiah’s return; hence a fair estimate would be about 435 B.C.
Even rationalist critics, for the most part, find no objection to this date, although a few, like
Pfeiffer, prefer to date him somewhat earlier, about 460 (Pfeiffer, IOT, p. 614). Nor do they
question the integrity of the book either on stylistic or ideological grounds, since they concede
that a messianic hope may have been cherished by the Jews as early as the late fifth century.

32
Introduction to Hebrew Poetry
MANY NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRITICS assumed that the Hebrews were incapable of
cultivating hymnic, lyric, or didactic poetry until a fairly late period, and then only under the
influence of their more cultured neighbors. The more radical representatives of the Rationalist
School felt confident in ruling out not only Davidic authorship of any and all of the Psalms, but
even the composition of any of them prior to the Babylonian Exile. They did not hesitate to
assign a substantial number of them to the Maccabean period (ca. 160 B.C.). The same is true of
the other poetical books; Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon were all
considered definitely post-exilic.

Characteristics of Hebrew Poetry

In the twentieth century there has been a trend toward moderating this view and conceding that at
least some of the Hebrew productions went back to an early period, especially in their original
oral form. The discovery of an increasing number of Akkadian and Egyptian hymns has clearly
confirmed the early cultivation of this genre by Israel’s neighbors in the second millennium B.C.
More recently this has been supplemented by the Ugaritic poetry composed in a Canaanite
language very close to Hebrew and dating from the fifteenth century B.C. Most modern critics,
therefore, now concede the possibility of early elements going back to the time of David or
before, even though the finished production may not have been finally committed to writing until
the late monarchy or the post-exilic period. The increasing amount of religious and didactic
poetry recovered from almost every culture with which Israel had contact prior to the Exile
makes it increasingly difficult to defend the post-exilic thesis for these books. In fact, we may
say that these non-Israelite productions of Semitic poetry compel us to conclude that even the
Hebrews must have committed their verse to written form, unless they were very backward
culturally by comparison with their neighbors.
The most noteworthy characteristic of Hebrew poetry is its parallelism. This term refers to the
practice of balancing one thought or phrase by a corresponding thought or phrase containing
approximately the same number of words, or at least a correspondence in ideas. In modern times
the earliest systematic treatment of Hebrew parallelism was made by Bishop Robert Lowth in his
work, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum Praelectiones Academicae (“Lectures on the Sacred Poetry
of the Hebrews”), published in 1753. There he defined the three basic types of parallelismus
membrorum as synonymous, antithetic, and synthetic. More recent authors like S. R. Driver have
added a fourth and fifth type, the climactic and the emblematic. We may illustrate these various
types by the following examples:

Synonomous Parallelism:
Identical
Psalm 24:1:
“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein.”
Similar
Psalm 19:2:
“Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.”

Antithetic Parallelism:
Psalm 1:6:
“For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous;
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
(This type is particularly common in the book of Proverbs.)

Synthetic or Constructive Parallelism:

Completion type (which is largely a parallelism of rhythm rather than of sense)
Psalm 2:6:
“Yet have I set my king
Upon Zion my holy hill.”
(Wa ˒ânɩ̂ ˒ nāsāḵtɩ̂ malkɩ̂ ˓al Ṣiyyôn har-qoḏšɩ̂ )
Comparison type
Proverbs 15:17:
“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is,
Than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
Reason type
Proverbs 26:4:
“Answer not a fool according to his folly.
Lest thou also be like unto him.”

Climactic Parallelism:
Psalm 29:1:
“Ascribe unto Yahweh, O ye sons of the mighty,
Ascribe unto Yahweh glory and strength”
(Observe the first line is itself incomplete, and the second line takes up some of its words anew
and then completes the thought.)

Emblematic Parallelism:
(In the emblematic parallelism the second line gives a figurative illustration but does so without
any words of contrast, simply by placing the two ideas loosely together. In such a case the first
line serves as an emblem to illustrate the second.)
Proverbs 25:25:
“Cold water to a thirsty soul,
And good news from a far country” (literal rendering).
Or, without a connective,
Proverbs 11:22:
“A gold ring in a swine’s snout—
A fair woman and without understanding” (literal rendering).
There are other types of parallelism which are discussed by some authorities, but those listed
represent all the really significant types. A chiastic parallelism is a subtype of the synonymous
parallelism, but instead of giving the parallel ideas in the same order (a-b, a1-b1) it is presented in
the opposite order (i.e., a-b, b1-a1) as in Ps. 51:1. (KJV, “Have mercy upon me, O God according
to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
transgressions.”)
Unger (IGOT, p. 365) describes the stairlike parallelism in which the second line takes up again
and carries on further a portion of the first line (as in Ps. 139:5–7); but this is very similar to the
climactic. (A thorough and adequate treatment of Hebrew parallelism may be found in G. B.
Gray’s Forms of Hebrew Poetry, 1915.)

Hebrew Poetry: Question of Rhythm

A much disputed point in connection with Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament pertains to the
rhythmic pattern. A certain cadence is often observable in Hebrew verse; sometimes for several
lines at a time a uniform number of stresses can successfully be made out. Thus in Ps. 23 the first
few verses present a 2:2 pattern; that is to say, each half-verse is characterized by two accentual
stresses. Sometimes we may even discover a group of verses which show a fair uniformity in the
number of unaccented syllables which fall between the stressed syllables.
Many nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century critics have proceeded on the assumption
that in its pure, original form, each of these poetic texts in the Old Testament must have
conformed to a systematic and predictable pattern. Even in ancient times authorities like
Josephus, influenced by Greek poetical theory, attempted to classify passages like Ex. 15:1–8
and Deut. 32:1–43 as a species of hexameter (or poetry containing six-foot verses). Modern
adherents to such theories, like Hoelscher, attempted to make out an iambic (short-long, short-
long) basis. Julius Ley thought he detected a frequent anapestic 3:2 meter (an anapest being a
short-short-long foot). Budde gave this poetry the label of Qinah (“lamentation”) meter. Eduard
Sievers (1901) tried to establish a 4:4-time basis for Hebrew poetry, with a long or accented
syllable counting as two beats (as in Greek poetry). He also catalogued the various stress
sequences as 2:2, 3:3, 4:4, 4:3, 3:4, 2:2:2, and so forth. Once having established what the
dominant metrical pattern was for each particular passage, these theorists believed that they
could amend the Received Text of the Hebrew wherever it did not conform to the ideal rhythm.
Many of the Liberal commentaries on the poetical books (and especially Psalms) are filled with
large numbers of such conjectural emendations based on the attempt to compel the Received
Text to conform to their preferred metrical pattern. Since the actual texts as transmitted very
often do not follow a consistent or regular metrical pattern, it was necessary to amend quite
frequently—even drastically. In some cases this process of emendation was carried out to such
an extent that the critics felt free to rearrange entire verses or groups of verses in a new order so
that they might conform to some imagined strophic pattern. (A strophic pattern implies a division
into stanzas in which a later stanza is supposed to correspond in rhythm and number of feet with
the preceding stanza.) It is only in very exceptional instances that identifiable stanzas can be
made out in the Received Text of the poetical books.
With the discovery and evaluation of the Ras Shamra Tablets, the unsoundness of this metrical
approach has been exposed. The Ugaritic poetry is of utmost relevance, because (1) it is written
in a Canaanite dialect quite closely related to Hebrew; (2) it contains many poetic cliches and
turns of expression which occur in the Hebrew psalms; (3) it dates back to the age of Moses, and
is therefore contemporaneous with Moses’ own poetry (as preserved in Ex. 15; Deut. 32, 33; Ps.
90). Certainly, then, if meter was observed in the original Hebrew poetry, it would have been
operative in the Canaanite verse of Ras Shamra.
G. D. Young has reported the results of a thorough study of Ugaritic poetry under every category
known to metrical science. He defines as possible manifestations of meter: (1) a stich series (i.e.,
the appearance of a uniform pattern of verse units); (2) the number of stresses per stich (or line);
(3) consistency of strophic pattern. After tabulating the results, and after a careful study of the
fifty or more cases of parallel accounts and repeated statements in the Ugaritic verse, he comes
to this conclusion: “At none of these levels can any definable metrical pattern be demonstrated in
the poetry of Ugarit. The repetition required for poetic expression is here not accentual or
syllabic, but is simply the very beautiful repetition of ideas in parallel form.… The idea that
meter is found in this poetry is, we feel, an illusion resulting from the observable facts of
parallelism and the Semitic morphology. A poetry whose one outstanding feature is the
paralleling of thoughts, which is necessarily accompanied by lines approximating each other in
length, a poetry written in a language in which almost any clause can be couched in from two to
three words, is a poetry which naturally lends itself to the creation of an impression of lines of
uniform metric length.… The facts, however, show a complete lack of pattern at any of the levels
noted.” This basic lack of meter was long ago recognized by Franz Delitzsch: “Old Hebrew
poetry has neither rhyme nor meter; not till the seventh century after Christ did Jewish poetry
adopt either.”

The Wisdom Literature

The so-called ḥoḵmâ literature (ḥoḵmâ being the Hebrew word for “wisdom”) was extensively
cultivated among all the ancient Near Eastern peoples. Pritchard’s ANET contains translations of
some of the more outstanding Egyptian examples, such as: “The Instruction of Ptahhotep,” “The
Instruction for King Mer-ka-Re,” “The Instruction of King Amen-em-het,” “The Instruction of
Prince Hor-dedef,” “The Instruction of Ani,” and “The Instruction of Amen-em-Opet.” There are
also collections of Akkadian proverbs and counsels of wisdom which have been discovered, and
in the Aramaic literature, “The Words of Ahiqar.”
It is against the background of this widely cultivated genre as practiced among Israel’s neighbors
that we are to understand the wisdom literature of the Hebrews themselves. Most characteristic
of the Semitic ḥoḵmâ are the practical precepts based upon a canny observation of the laws of
human nature and of the rules for success in social, business, and political life. In general it may
be said that the “Wisdom” with which these ancient sages were concerned was of a practical
rather than a theoretical nature. Like the sophoi (“wise men”) of the early Greek culture, the
Hebrew ḥāḵām originally was a person who knew how to do things well which the average
person could only do indifferently or not at all. In this sense the master craftsman Bezaleel is
referred to in Ex. 31:3 as ḥāḵām. From this usage it came to be applied to the art of getting along
successfully with God and with men. As a necessary involvement it also brought in the moral
law which governs both human relationships and relationships with God, and which determines
the degree of success to which a man may attain. As Driver points out (ILOT, p. 392–93), the
quality of ḥoḵmâ was imputed especially to persons who were able to come up with the right
answer in critical situations. Thus Joseph is described as ḥāḵām because of his ability to interpret
Pharaoh’s dream (Gen. 41:39). The same is true of the wise woman of Tekoa who engineered a
reconciliation between David and his son Absalom (2 Sam. 14); likewise also Solomon in his
clever stratagem for deciding which of two claimants to a single baby was its true mother (1
Kings 3).
There actually seems to have been a prominent class or school of wise men in ancient Hebrew
society, and, as Driver puts it, “They applied themselves rather to the observation of human
character as such, seeking to analyze conduct, studying action in its consequences, and
establishing morality upon the basis of principles common to humanity at large” (ILOT, p. 393).
In its highest form, Hebrew ḥoḵmâ sought to look into the essence of God’s truth and grasp the
general ideas which gave the Israelite faith dimensions fitting it to become a world religion.
From this perspective all natural and moral phenomena and experiences were reflected upon in
order to apprehend more perfectly the final ground of life and the principles by which it is
governed.

33
Psalms
THE HEBREW TITLE for this book is Tehillɩ̂ m, or “Praise Songs”; the Greek rendering Psalmoi
in the LXX means literally “songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument.” Psalmos
comes from psallein, “to pluck a stringed instrument” as an accompaniment to song. The 150
psalms composing this collection cover a great variety of themes, and it is difficult to make any
valid generalizations. Probably it is safe to say that they all embody at least an element of
personal response on the part of the believer toward the goodness and grace of God. Often they
include a record of the psalmist’s own inner emotions of discouragement, anxiety, or thankful
joy in the face of the opposition of God’s enemies or in view of God’s varied providences. But
whether the psalmist is occupied with a mournful or a joyous theme, he always is expressing
himself as in the presence of the living God. There are a few psalms, of course, which mostly
contain the thoughts and revelations of God Himself, such as Ps. 2, but these are most
exceptional.
From ancient times the Psalter seems to have been divided into five books, perhaps to correspond
to the five books of the Torah. Each of these divisions ends with a doxology. The divisions are as
follows:
Book I: Psalms 1–41
Book II: Psalms 42–72
Book III: Psalms 73–89
Book IV: Psalms 90–106
Book V: Psalms 107–150

Authorship and Date of the Psalms

In most cases, the texts of the psalms themselves do not indicate the author by name. Psalm
72:20 forms an apparent exception to this rule; and yet it is possible to explain it as an editorial
addition to the original collection of all of the Davidic psalms, of which Ps. 72 was the last unit
in the collection. For the most part, the only definite information about authorship is found in the
psalm titles. Not all of the titles contain the author’s name, but those which do present us with
the following tradition: one by Moses (Ps. 90); seventy-three by David (mostly in Book I and
Book II); twelve by Asaph (50, 73–83); ten by descendants of Korah (42, 44–49, 84, 87–88); one
or two by Solomon (72, 127); one by Heman the Ezrahite (88); one by Ethan the Ezrahite (89).
Of these, the earliest would naturally be Ps. 90, by Moses, presumably composed about 1405
B.C. The Davidic psalms would have originated between 1020 and 975 B.C.; those of Asaph from
approximately the same period; Ps. 127 from the period of Solomon’s reign, possibly 950. It is
hard to date the descendants of Korah and the two Ezrahites who are mentioned; presumably
they were pre-exilic. Of the psalms not carrying titles, some were undoubtedly Davidic (e.g., 2
and 33) and the others date from later periods all the way up to the return from exile (such as 126
and 137, the latter of which is at least as late as the Exile). No convincing evidence, however, has
been offered for the dating of any of the psalms later than approximately 500 B.C.
 Authorship of the Davidic Psalms

As we shall presently see, the rationalist critics take a very skeptical view of the reliability of the
psalm titles and largely disregard their value as mere speculations of later rabbis. Having thus
disposed of the evidence of the titles, the critics tend to reject the possibility, on theoretical
grounds, that David could have composed any of the psalms in the Psalter. (Eissfeldt allows him
only one or two.) These are the principal arguments advanced in rejecting the claims of Davidic
authorship:
1. Some of the psalms attributed to David speak of the king in the third person rather than in the
first person (e.g., 20, 21, 61, 63, 72, 110). One would expect an author to refer to himself as I or
thou rather than he. There is, however, abundant evidence that ancient authors referred to
themselves frequently in the third person. In classical literature, for instance, there can be no
doubt that Xenophon was the author of The Anabasis; nevertheless, he refers to himself almost
always in the third person. The same is true of Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. Repeatedly in
the Old Testament we find Jehovah quoted as speaking of Himself in the third person. Even in
the Ten Commandments which begin in the first person (“I am Yahweh thy God, who brought
thee out of the land of Egypt”), there is an occasional shift to the third person (“for Yahweh will
not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain”). It is therefore out of the question to use this
matter of the third person as a criterion for ruling out authorship.
2. Some of the psalms attributed to David allegedly refer to Israel’s sanctuary as a temple
structure already built (e.g., 5, 27, 28, 63, 68, 69, 101, 138), even though this edifice was not
erected until the reign of Solomon, David’s successor. This argument, however, rests upon a
misunderstanding of the terms the house of Jehovah, the sanctuary, or the temple (hēyḵāl). We
occasionally meet with all of these terms in literature which purports to have been composed
before the time of David; for instance, sanctuary (qōdeš) is used of the tabernacle in Ex. 28:43;
house of the Lord (bēyt Yahweh) in Joshua 6:24; the house of God (bēyt Elôhɩ̂ m) in Judg. 18:31;
and even temple (hēyḵāl) in 1 Sam. 1:9; 3:3. At the same time it should be observed that the
sanctuary mentioned in the psalms attributed to David is often referred to in terms that never
could be used in connection with Solomon’s temple. Thus, in Ps. 27, the sanctuary is referred to
not only as “temple” (hēyḵāl) and the “house of Jehovah” (bēyt Yahweh) but also as sukkah or
“booth” and ˒ōhel or “tent.” Judging then from the internal evidence of the psalms themselves,
the Hebrews sometimes referred to the tent of the tabernacle as “sanctuary,” or “house of the
Lord,” or “house of God,” or “temple.” No structure of wood or stone was necessarily implied by
any of these expressions.
3. It is objected that some of the psalms attributed to David show telltale Aramaisms which
indicate late post-exilic authorship. An example of this would be Psalm 139, where verse 2
shows the preposition le (“to”) as a sign of the direct object (rather than ˒ēt); verse 4 uses millah
for “word” rather than the regular Hebrew term, dāḇār or ˒imrâ; and verse 8 employs the verb
sālaq for “ascend,” rather than the usual ˓ālâ. Some critics have even objected to poetical forms
of the pronominal suffix such as -aiḵi as a variant for the usual Hebrew -ayik for “thy.” It should
be remembered, however, that David had extensive contact with the Aramaic-speaking
principalities to the north of Israel, and that many of his reading public from the ten tribes would
be quite familiar with words borrowed from across the border in Damascus. The poetry of many
nations shows a tendency to incorporate rare or dialectic forms in order to enrich the vocabulary,
and there is no reason why Hebrew poetry should have been an exception. It cannot be denied
that the fifteenth-century Canaanite poetry of the Ras Shamra (Ugarit) shows a very strong
Aramaic coloring. The presence of occasional Aramaisms, therefore, is not by itself conclusive
evidence of authorship later than the time of David. Thus, while Ps. 139 may not be properly
attributed to David (for we cannot maintain the inerrancy of the Hebrew psalm titles as such),
much more extensive proof must be adduced to prove this than the mere presence of Aramaisms
here and there.
4. The historical David, according to many critics like Sellin, could hardly have found leisure to
compose poetry, because his life was so filled with practical affairs; nor would he have had the
inclination to such a refined, cultural pursuit. In answer to this, we should recognize that not only
the psalm titles themselves but also abundant evidences from other Old Testament records point
to the importance of music and poetry in David’s career. The book of 1 Samuel presents him as a
skilled harpist at the court of Saul. In 2 Sam. 22 we find in slightly different form the entire
substance of Ps. 18 quoted as a composition of King David. The passage in 2 Sam. 1:19–27
contains a poetical lamentation composed by David on the occasion of the death of Saul and
Jonathan at the battle of Mount Gilboa. Since this latter composition does not appear in the
Psalms, it could not have been borrowed from them. The fact that it actually names Saul and
Jonathan as such indicates that it cannot be explained away as a later composition wrongly
attributed to David; it could only have been composed by a contemporary living around 1010
B.C.
If David could have composed so highly artistic an elegy as this, he certainly had the capacity for
the other psalms attributed to him by the psalm titles. In 1 Samuel 16:18 we see clearly that
according to the ancient Hebrew author, it was possible for a really talented man to combine the
professions of war and music: “Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is
cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a
comely person, and the Lord is with him.” In 2 Sam. 23:1, after a full account of David’s
prowess in war and effectiveness in governmental administration, he is referred to as “the sweet
psalmist of Israel.” He apparently was interested in the improvement of musical instruments and
designed innovations of his own. Amos 6:5 (ca. 755 B.C.) refers to him as an inventor or player
of musical instruments. But he was known not only as a soloist but also as an organizer of choirs
or singing guilds. This is attested by 2 Sam. 6:5: “And David and all the house of Israel played
before the Lord with all manner of instruments … harps … psalteries … timbrels, and on cornets
and on cymbals”; and also verse 15: “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of
the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.” In 1 Chron. 16:4–5; 2 Chron. 7:6;
and 29:25 we find explicit reference to David’s activity in organizing the guilds of singing
Levites, who were to play such a large role in the liturgy of the Jerusalem temple.
In this connection it is worth noting that the New Testament repeatedly refers to David as the
author of the psalms quoted by Christ and the apostles. In no case is a psalm so cited attributed
by the Hebrew psalm title to someone other than David (although a few, like Ps. 2, lack any
Hebrew title at all). Critics often assert that the book of Psalms was simply known by the title of
David in New Testament times and that references to the Psalter which employ his name do not
necessarily indicate a belief in his personal authorship. A careful study, however, of the
numerous instances in point leads almost unavoidably to the conclusion that both Jesus and His
disciples assumed without question that David was the personal author. Otherwise there is no
point to Christ’s query in Matt. 22:45: “If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?” The
question at issue was whether the Messiah was to be a mere human being or someone divine;
only if divine was it appropriate for the mighty king David to refer to him as his Lord. In Mark
12:36, Jesus says very explicitly, “David himself said by the Holy Spirit-” (Ps. 110:1). The
apostolic testimony occurs in passages like Acts 4:24–25: “Lord … who by the mouth of thy
servant David hast said”—and then they proceed to quote Psalm 2:1–2. Other New Testament
citations include Luke 20:42–44 (Ps. 110); Acts 1:20 (Ps. 69); Acts 2:25–28 (Ps. 16); Acts 2:34
(Ps. 110); and Rom. 4:6–8 (Ps. 32).

Reliability of the Hebrew Psalm Titles

The critics generally regard the Hebrew psalm titles as very late and unreliable, usually being
derived by inference from the internal evidence of the psalms themselves. This conclusion is
often based upon two lines of evidence: the occasional discrepancies between the psalm titles in
the MT and those in the LXX, and the lack of correspondence between statements of historical
background and the situation presupposed in the psalms themselves. An example of this
supposed discrepancy is found in Ps. 7, the title of which states that David sang this psalm to the
Lord “concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite”; or again, the title of Ps. 34 is thought to
accord very poorly with the mood and sentiments conveyed by the text.
Mature reflection, however, should lead the investigator to quite an opposite conclusion. It is
impossible to explain how any “later rabbis” would have ventured to attach titles of this sort to
psalms whose text does not clearly reflect the situations in David’s life which are assigned as
settings for the compositions. Many of the titles contain allusions to incidents in David’s career
of which we have no other knowledge. For example, in Ps. 60 biographical details appear
concerning battles fought with Aram-naharaim, Aram-zobah, and Edom which are not recorded
at all in the books of Samuel. As Wilhelm Moeller points out (GATE, p. 273), the supplemental
details constitute a powerful argument for the antiquity of the psalm title itself. A later editor
would never have ventured to manufacture new details not contained in the books of Samuel or
Chronicles. It is also significant that several of the “orphan” psalms (i.e., psalms that bear no
title) teem with historical allusions and references to recent events or contemporary situations
which would have furnished ample ground for later rabbinical conjecture.
The LXX furnishes conclusive evidence that the titles were added to the Hebrew Psalter at a date
long before Hellenistic times. That is to say, there are several technical terms appearing in the
Hebrew titles the meanings of which had been completely forgotten by the time the Alexandrian
translation was made (ca. 150–100 B.C.). For example, the expression “to the choir leader” (lam-
menaṣṣēaḥ) is nonsensically rendered by the LXX translator “unto the end” (eis to telos). (Cf.,
e.g., Ps. 44, equivalent to the LXX Ps. 43). Apparently the Alexandrian scholar conjectured the
vocalization to be le-min-nēṣaḥ—“to from the end.” Jerome in his commentary on Daniel (par.
620) suggests that the proper translation of this Hebrew expression should be “to the victor”; he
was probably influenced in this by the rendering of Theodotion, eis to nikos, “to the victory”; or
else by Aquila’s tō nikopoiō, “to the victory winner”; or possibly even by Symmachus’s
epinikion, “song of triumph.” Another example is the title of Ps. 80, which contains el-šōšannɩ̂ m,
“to the lilies,” which is rendered by the Septuagint, “For those who will suffer alteration” (hyper
tōn alloiōthēsomenōn) as if it had come from el-šeššōnɩ̂ m (“to those who change”)—a mistaken
interpretation followed by Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel (par. 653). A third example is ˓al-
˓alāmôṯ (Ps. 46), which probably means “According to maidens,” that is, to be sung at a soprano
pitch. The LXX renders it, “Concerning the hidden things” (hyper tōn kryphiōn) as if derived
from the verb ˓ālam, “to hide.”
The fact that these Hebrew technical terms were no longer understood can only lead to the
conclusion that these particular words had fallen out of use so long before the second century
B.C.; that the true meaning had been completely forgotten. In view of the fact that many scholars
like Duhm, Eissfeldt, and Pfeiffer have confidently assigned many of the psalms to the
Maccabean period (i.e., 165 B.C. or thereabouts), it is important to understand the significance of
this evidence from the Greek version. Admittedly the psalm titles were added after the
composition of the psalms to which they were attached; yet the titles themselves—at least those
that contain the phrases above mentioned—must have been added so long before the Septuagint
translation that their meaning was already forgotten. It necessarily follows that such psalms
themselves must have been written long before the Greek period.
In regard to the once favored theory of Maccabean origin of the Psalms, it is interesting to note
that in 1 Macc. 7:17 a passage from Ps. 79:3 is quoted as Holy Scripture. This would indicate
that there was already a canonical collection of psalms in the Hebrew Bible by the time of the
Maccabees. The more recent trend among rationalist critics has been away from the extremes of
late dating. Bentzen states: “The result of the investigations carried on since the beginning of the
twentieth century must however be that we have to leave behind us the a priori presupposition
that the Psalms were post-exilic. Psalmody was known in Israel from its earliest days. The oldest
Israelite poem which we are able to date approximately, the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5), is a
psalm, and psalms were composed in the Old Testament style in other parts of the Near East
before we know anything of Israel” (IOT, 2:167). Engnell adds, “Speaking candidly, there is
merely one psalm in the whole Psalter of which I am quite convinced that it is post-Exilic:
number 137. And as far as I can determine, no other psalm is comparable with it in contents and
style. Should this be a mere coincidence?” In his Fresh Approach to the Psalms (1957) Oesterley
cites numerous Babylonian and Egyptian parallels to the Psalms as indicating the necessity of
finding a pre-exilic origin for much of the Psalter.
The most significant evidence of the antiquity of the Psalms as a literary genre comes from the
poetry of ancient Ugarit. Perhaps the most reliable listing of their parallels in poetic phraseology
and verse structure is to be found in the footnotes of the Ugaritic portion of Pritchard’s ANET.
Typical examples are:
Psalm 104:3: “Who maketh the clouds his chariot”; cf. the common Ugaritic title of Aleyan Baal:
rkb ˓rpt (i.e., rākib ˓urpāti or “Rider upon the clouds”).
Psalm 6:6: “I water my couch with my tears” resembles Krt 28–30: “His tears are shed like
shekels earthward, like fifth-shekels on the bed as he weeps.”
The Ugaritic “Thou wilt take thine everlasting kingdom, thy sovereignty of generation (after)
generation (d-r-k-t d-t d-r-d-r-k)” (Text 68:10) is quite similar to Ps. 145:13: “Thy kingdom is an
everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”
“O El, haste thee, O El, come to my help” is very similar to Ps. 40:13: “Make haste to help me,
OYahweh.”
These are but samples of the very large number of striking parallels in Ugarit poetry and they
lead to the conclusion that the Hebrews adapted a poetic genre which they found already highly
developed among the Canaanite peoples whom they conquered.
 History of the Compilation of Psalms

In addition to seventy-three psalms which are by their titles attributed to David, there are, as we
have already seen, many others which are assigned to contemporary authors or those who were
slightly later than his time. Psalm 90 is attributed to Moses; twelve psalms are assigned to
Asaph; ten others to the descendants of Korah; one (Ps. 127) to Solomon; one to Heman the
Ezrahite 5 (Ps. 88), and one to Ethan the Ezrahite (Ps. 89). Of the “orphan” or anonymous
psalms there is little doubt that some of them indicate a date of composition during or after the
Exile. We may regard Ps. 137, “By the waters of Babylon,” as exilic and Ps. 126, “When the
Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,” as early post-exilic, perhaps 500 B.C. (But it should be
noted that 50 percent of the Psalms are anonymous).
It was therefore inevitable that the Psalter should be accumulated by stages over a long period of
time. Apparently the grouping into books dated from an early period. Thus Ps. 72:20 states, “The
prayers [tepillôt] of David the son of Jesse are ended”; this notation doubtless marks the end of
an earlier smaller edition of the Psalter which contained largely the Davidic psalms and those
alone. At least three collections can be distinguished.
1. Book I (Pss. 1–41) was probably arranged by David, or else by some collaborator under his
direction. Although it bears no title, Ps. 1 serves as a logical introduction to the whole collection
and may well have been composed either by David himself or by Solomon his son. Psalm 2,
which likewise lacks a title, is definitely ascribed to David in Acts 4:25. The reason Ps. 10 has no
title is probably to be found in the original unity of Pss. 9 and 10 (they are regarded by the LXX
as a single composition). Psalm 33, which has no title in the MT, is ascribed by the LXX
likewise to David. It thus appears that the entire contents of Book I is to be assigned to David.
Yet it is hard to tell why only a partial collection should have been made of David’s poetry and
incorporated into this first volume. It would be difficult to show that these psalms were
composed earlier in his career and that the Davidic psalms of the later books came from his old
age, for in some cases (notably Ps. 32 and Ps. 51), some of those appearing in the later books are
quite possibly as early as those in Book I. It has been suggested by Ewald and others that
possibly the earliest edition of the Psalter contained not only Pss. 1–41, but also 51–72, and that
it was only at a later period that the psalms of Asaph and the sons of Korah were inserted (i.e.,
Pss. 42–50). It certainly is true that none of Pss. 51–72 is assigned by title to any other author
besides David, and the last verse of Ps. 72 would then constitute an appropriate finis to the entire
collection as it was originally published.
2. Book II (Pss. 42–72) and Book III (Pss. 73–89) may well have been collected and published at
a later period, possibly in the reign of Josiah, to furnish additional material for devotional
expression during his revival movement. On the other hand, it is just as likely that this
compilation took place earlier, in the reign of Hezekiah (ca. 710 B.C.). It is well known that
Hezekiah had an active Bible committee (“the men of Hezekiah,” Prov. 25:1) as part of his
reform program. These two books then could have been prepared for publication and certainly
for liturgical use in the temple under Hezekiah’s sponsorship.
3. The remaining books, IV (90–106) and V, (107–150) are largely a collection of a
miscellaneous sort, the date of which is uncertain. Some of them may have been as early as
David or even Moses, and some as late as the return from the Exile. No doubt, this compilation
was made in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the reconstruction of the political and
religious life of the second commonwealth was vigorously carried through. It is fair to say that
there are no historical allusions or situations presupposed in Pss. 90–150 which do not accord
with events in Hebrew history prior to 430 B.C.
Rationalist higher criticism has come to no significant measure of agreement as to the time when
the various individual psalms were composed. Scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries tended to deal with each individual psalm on its merits, and conjecturing its age by that
stage in the development of Israel’s religious thought which it seemed to reflect, they could
arrive at an approximate date on evolutionistic principles. Or else the critic might search for
possible historical allusions and then look for a set of circumstances in Israelite history to which
those allusions might be appropriate. Those who espoused the Maccabean Theory for the
composition of many of the psalms often followed this latter methodology.
With the advent of Hermann Gunkel, an entirely new approach came into favor. Beginning with
his Ausgewahlte Psalmen (1904) he started to use the principles of Form Criticism in analyzing
the corpus of the Psalter. He classified the psalms into various categories or types (Gattungen)
and sought to identify the general situation in life (Sitz im Leben) which brought them into
existence. By a careful study of similar material from the early civilizations of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, Gunkel sought to recapture the ancient Hebrew viewpoint and to analyze the
psalms in a much more valid and appropriate way than had been possible by the earlier method.
(Cf. Rowley, OTMS, p. 163.) The great majority of the psalms he was able to divide into five
main types:
1. The hymns intended for purposes of communal worship expressing the author’s own personal
adoration and devotion toward Jehovah.
2. The communal laments in the face of some major catastrophe or disaster which had befallen
the community (e.g., Pss. 44; 74; 79; 80; 83).
3. Royal psalms which focus particular attention upon the Israelite king as a servant of Jehovah.
4. The individual lament—a type which formed the backbone of the Psalter—in which the
individual author finds himself in distress, threatened by his foes, and unjustly persecuted; and
yet by an upsurge of faith he expresses a certainty that he will be heard, and often makes a vow
of tangible expression for his gratitude in response to the confidently expected deliverance.
5. Individual songs of thanksgiving (such as Pss. 18, 30, 32, 34, 41, 66, 92, etc.) in which a
grateful recital is made of the deliverances and blessings the worshiper has received as he
approaches the altar of thanksgiving. Gunkel’s principal concern was not chronological, but his
tendency was to place the major part of the Psalter in the time prior to the Exile (especially in the
case of the “royal” psalms).
This Form Critical approach was taken up and extended by many of the more recent scholars
such as Eissfeldt, Bentzen, Engnell, Oesterley, Robinson, and E. A. Leslie (The Psalms, 1949).
Sigmund Mowinckel (Psalmen Studien, 1921–24) also followed the Form Critical approach,
with the important modification, however, that virtually none of the psalms was genuinely
personal in an individualistic sense but all pertained to the worshiping community. A great many
of the “enthronement psalms” are believed to have originated in connection with the yearly
celebration of the enthronement of Yahweh which Mowinckel supposed took place at the New
Year festival (on the analogy of the Babylonian enthronement of Marduk at the time of each new
year). He even understood the “day of Yahweh” as referring originally to the cultic day of God’s
enthronement, but projected into the future as the time when Yahweh would come with power to
assert Himself as King over all the earth. Many of these “enthronement psalms” he regarded as
dating back to the time of the Jewish monarchy. Norman Snaith vigorously opposed the theory
that the psalms of this type were actually composed for the celebration of the Sabbath or that the
majority of them were post-exilic in origin. (These ingenious speculations will be taken seriously
only by those who accept the humanistic presuppositions of those who devise them.)

Numeration of the Psalms

Both the MT and the LXX contain a total of 150 psalms. Whether this was the original number is
not completely certain. The Talmud (Sabbath 16) speaks of 147, one for each year of life of the
patriarch Jacob. Nor is it certain how the psalms were originally divided. The Talmud
(Berachoth 9b) speaks of Pss. 1 and 2 as constituting a single composition. On the other hand,
Acts 13:33 explicitly refers to Ps. 2:7 as coming from “the second psalm.”
The English version follows the division of the MT so far as psalm numbers are concerned.
Unlike the Hebrew practice, however, it does not count the psalm titles as constituting a verse.
Hence there is usually a divergence in verse numbering between the English Bible and the
Hebrew Bible whenever the psalm in question has a title. (I.e., the Hebrew number will be one
higher than the English number; in the case of Ps. 51 and a few others, it will be two higher.) As
indicated, the psalm numbering of the LXX differs from that of the MT (and therefore of the
English Bible) because: (1) it counts Ps. 10 as part of Ps. 9; (2) it counts Ps. 115 as part of Ps.
114; (3) it divides Ps. 116 into two separate psalms; and (4) it divides Ps. 147 into two separate
psalms. The LXX also adds Ps. 151, with the notation, “outside of the number.” Since the
Vulgate follows the numeration of the LXX, naturally the Catholic English translations follow
suit.

Contents of the Psalm Titles

It is not altogether certain that the present arrangement of the psalm titles in the MT accurately
reflects their original position. J. W Thirtle in The Titles of the Psalms (1905) has very
convincingly argued that many of the psalms possess not only a prescript but also a postscript. At
a later period, however, the postscripts of some psalms were mistakenly attached by the scribes
to the prescripts of the succeeding psalms. He assigned to the postscript (or notation at the end of
the composition) the following types of material: (1) the notation “To the choirmaster”; (2)
musical directions indicating what kind of instrument was to be played (such as negɩ̂ nôṯ, or
“stringed instruments;” neḥɩ̂ lôṯ or “wind instruments”); and (3) the occasion (or melody tune)
which applied to the psalm in question, for instance, ˓al mût lab-bēn in Ps. 9 and ˓al-˓ayyelet
haš-šaḥar in Ps. 22. In other words if elements of this sort appear in a psalm title, according to
Thirtle, they have been incorrectly transferred from the original postscript at the end of the
preceding psalm. When such elements are removed, it then appears that a proper prescript or
initial title contains only these three elements: (1) the genre label, such as mizmōr or “psalm”;
maskɩ̂ l or “instruction”; shɩ̂ r or “song”; mikhtām, or “atonement song”; (2) the ascription of
authorship, of David, of Asaph, et cetera; (3) the occasion (e.g., “when he fled from Absalom,”
or “which he sang to Jehovah concerning the words of Cush,” etc.). Thirtle pointed out that some
of the Egyptian and Akkadian hymns ended with a final notation including even “to the end”—
which may have been a factor influencing the LXX to render lam-menaṣṣēaḥ as eis to telos (“to
the end”). (In this connection it should be mentioned that in the case of Thirtle’s prescripts there
are about twenty-five discrepancies in the psalm titles between the LXX and the MT. For
example, seven have psalmos where the MT does not read mizmōr; seven have ōdē where the
MT lacks shɩ̂ r; and five in the LXX have allēlouia where the Hebrew has no hallelûyah.)

Technical Terms in the Psalm Titles

1. Mizmōr, or “psalm,” meant a song rendered to the accompaniment of instrumental music,

originally a stringed instrument, from zāmar, “to pluck” (but cf. also zamara, Arabic, “to play on
the reed”). Fifty-seven of the psalms are so labeled.
2. Shɩ̂ r, or “song,” implies nothing concerning a musical accompaniment. It is simply a general
term for vocal music. Twenty-seven psalms are so labeled; fifteen of these are called shɩ̂ r ham-
ma˓alôth or “the song of ascents.”
3. Maskɩ̂ l, or “didactic poem,” or “contemplative poem” (the verb from which it comes, hiskɩ̂ l,
may mean “give attention to, consider, ponder; or give insight to, teach someone”). It appears as
a title for thirteen psalms. Since the contents of these psalms are by no means uniformly didactic,
we should probably prefer the interpretation “contemplative.”
4. Miḵtām is a disputed term. If it derives from a root meaning “to cover” (cf. katama, Arabic,
and katāmu, Akkadian, both of which mean “to cover”), it might signify a song of covering or
atoning for sin (so Mowinckel). Later Hebrew construed this word to mean “epigram” (hence the
LXX stēlographia), or “engraving,” as if referring to a composition intended to record
memorable thoughts, pithy sayings, or eloquent refrains. Six psalms bear this title.
5. Tepillah simply means a “prayer.” Five psalms are so designated.
6. Tehillah means a “song of praise” and is found in five psalm titles. Note that this word in the
plural, Tehillɩ̂ m, furnishes the Hebrew title for the whole book of Psalms.
7. Šiggāyôn may perhaps mean an “irregular” or “wandering” song (from šāgâ, “to wander”);
hence, an irregular dithyrambic ode. (Only Ps. 7 bears this term, but so also does the psalm in
Hab. 3.)

TECHNICAL TERMS IN THE PSALMS

TYPES OF PSALMS

Term Meaning Psalm

Mizmōr Musical accompaniment 57

Shɩ̂ r Vocal music 27

Maskɩ̂ l Didactic or contemplative 13

Mikhtām Song of covering, atonement 6

Tepillah Prayer 5

Tehillah Song of praise 5

Šiggāyôn Wandering or irregular song 1

Musical Terms

Lam-menas̥ s̥ ēah̥ To the choir leader 55

Negɩ̂ nôṯ With string instruments 13

Neh̥illôṯ With wind instruments 1

Šemɩ̄nɩ̂ ṯ With an eight-stringed lute or 2

an octave lower than soprano

˓alamoṯ Soprano or high pitched 2

Mah̥alaṯ Song of lament 2

Melody Indicators

˒al mût lab-bēn Death of son 1

˒al ˒ayyeleṯ haš-šah̥ar According to the hind of the 1

morning

Šušān or ˓al šošnnɩ̂ m To the lilies 3

˓al tašh̥êt Do not destroy or corrupt 4

˓al Yônaṯ ˊēlem reh̥ōqɩ̂ m According to a dove of 1

silence those who are afar off
 Psalms: Musical Terms in the Titles

1. Lam-menaṣṣēaḥ, as explained above, probably means “to the choir leader.” It has plausibly
been suggested that this term was affixed to those psalms which were included in a special
anthology made by the temple choir leader for the convenience of his singers-rather than
including the entire group of 150 in the complete repertoire of the Psalter. Fifty-five psalms are
so labeled.
2. Negɩ̂ nôṯ means “stringed instruments” or “songs to be sung to the accompaniment of stringed
instruments.” (Pss. 4:1, 6:1, 54:1, 55:1, 61:1, 67:1, 69:18, 76:1; also Job 30:9; Isa. 38:20; Lam
3:14, 5:14; Hab 3:19)
3. Neḥillôṯ means “wind instruments” (cf. hālɩ̂ l flute). (Ps. 5)
4. Šemɩ̄nɩ̂ ṯ seems to mean either an “eight-stringed lute”, or possibly an “octave” (i.e., an octave
lower than the soprano or ˓alamôṯ). (Pss. 6, 12)
5. ˓alamôṯ, or “maidens,” may mean “soprano” or “high pitch” (cf. 1 Chron. 15:20; Ps. 46).
6. Maḥalaṯ means “sickness” and/or “grief” and may imply therefore a song of lament (Pss. 53,
88). Alternatively, it may have been the name of a woman singer, as R. K. Harrison suggests
(IOT, p. 979).

Psalms: Melody Indicators

Some of the cryptic words in the psalm titles may indicate either the occasion on which the
psalm was originally composed; or, as is more likely, the opening words of a well-known
melody, according to which the psalm was to be sung (just as we might say, “Sing to the tune of
the ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ ”).
1. ˓al m t lab-bēn in Ps. 9 may indicate some well-known song beginning with the words, The
death of a son (the preposition ˓al being construed as “according to”).
2. ˓al ˓ayyeleṯ haš-šaḥar means “according to the hind of the morning” (Ps. 22).
3. Šūšān or ˓al šôšannɩ̂ m would refer to the lily and perhaps signified “to the lilies.”(Pss. 60, 69,
80).
4. ˒al tašḥêṯ seems to mean “do not destroy” or “do not corrupt.” Apparently a well-known song
began with these words, and its melody was to be followed here (Pss. 57, 58, 59, 75).
5. ˓al Yônaṯ ˒ēlem reḥōqɩ̂ m apparently means “according to a dove of silence those who are afar
off.” Some have suggested that it should be repointed to read ˒ēlɩ̂ m reḥōqɩ̂ m, or, “terebinths afar
off” (Ps. 56).
A technical term which does not occur in the psalm titles is the perplexing selah., which appears
often in the body of the text. While many explanations have been given for this word the most
plausible is that which derives it from the root sālal meaning “to lift up.” The LXX renders it
diapsalma, which means “musical interlude.” Selah then is not a word to be read aloud, but
simply a notice to the reciter that at this point he should pause in his utterance and permit the
musical accompaniment to strike up; or else it is a direction for him to lift up his voice to a
higher intensity or pitch, or possibly even to lift up his heart to pious contemplation or
meditation. Psalm 67:1–2 contains selah in the middle of the sentence, and this makes it difficult
to construe as pause for musical interlude. However, in most other instances this interpretation
seems quite appropriate.
Psalms 120–134 bear in their titles the expression “the song of the ascents” (“degrees,” KJV; šɩ̂ r
hamma˓alôṯ, Hebrew). An old Jewish tradition explains this as referring to a semicircular flight
of steps leading up to the court of men in the temple (Mishnah: Middoth 2:5). A more likely
explanation is that these “ascents” referred to the stages of pilgrimage up to Jerusalem (the word
ma˓alôṯ being derived from the verb ˓ālâ “go up,” i.e., to Jerusalem). Some prefer to interpret as
“processions” (of pilgrims), by metonymy from “ascent.” Thus these would be pilgrim songs, to
be sung on the way to Jerusalem for the annual feast days. This explanation also seems
preferable to that of Gesenius and Delitzsch, who refer it to the steplike, progressive movement
of the thoughts expressed in the psalms themselves; unfortunately for this theory, some of this
group do not show this characteristic at all (e.g., Pss. 125 and 133).

Messianic Psalms

One of the most remarkable features of the Psalter is its frequent allusion to the coming Messiah.
The chart below lists a few of the many examples of Messianic psalms.

Christ’s Ascension Ps. 68:18 (Eph. 4:8)

Christ’s Betrayal Ps. 41:9 (Luke 22:48)

Christ’s Death Ps. 22:1–21 (Matt. 27)

Christ’s Deity Ps. 45:6–7 (Heb. 1:8–9)

Christ’s Exaltation Ps. 8:5–6 (Heb. 2:6–9)

Christ’s Kingship Ps. 2:6; 89:18–19 (Acts 5:31)

Christ’s Lordship Ps. 8:2 (Matt. 21:15–16)

Ps. 110:1 (Matt. 22:44; Acts 2:34)

Christ’s Obedience Ps. 40:6–8 (Heb. 10:5–7)

 Christ’s Priesthood Ps. 110:4 (Heb. 5:6)

Christ’s Resurrection Ps. 2:7; 16:10 (Acts 2:25–28, 13:33–35)

Christ’s Sonship Ps. 2:7 (Matt. 3:17, Heb. 1:5)

Christ’s Sufferings Ps. 69:9 (John 2:17, Rom. 15:3) Ps. 69:4
(John 15:25)

Christ’s Supremacy Ps. 118:22–23 (Matt. 21:42)

Examples of other Messianic Psalms include: 72, 102, 109.

Imprecatory Psalms

Various psalms contain appeals to God to pour out His wrath upon the psalmist’s enemies. These
seem to contradict the Christian stance of love toward one’s enemies. Nevertheless, it is a
mistake to explain away these expressions as degenerate and sub-Christian sentiments which
have been permitted in the sacred canon by the principle of “progressive revelation.” Progressive
revelation is not to be thought of as a progress from error to truth, but rather as a progress from
the partial and obscure to the complete and clear. A consistent Evangelical will hold that all
portions of the Word of God are true in the sense intended by the original author under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, even though couched in terms which may perhaps have been more
comprehensible and relevant to God’s people at the time of composition than in later ages.
It is important to realize that prior to the first advent of Christ, the only tangible way in which the
truth of the Scripture could be demonstrated to an unbelieving world was by the pragmatic test of
disaster befalling those who were in error and deliverance being granted to those who held to the
truth. As long as the wicked continued to triumph on earth, their temporal prosperity seemed to
refute the holiness and sovereignty of the God of Israel. A Hebrew believer in the Old Testament
age could only chafe in deep affliction of soul as long as such a state of affairs continued.
Identifying himself completely with God’s cause, he could only regard God’s enemies as his
own, and implore God to uphold His own honor and justify His own righteousness by inflicting a
crushing destruction upon those who either in theory or in practice denied His sovereignty and
His law. Not until the supreme exhibition of God’s displeasure at sin, demonstrated by the death
of His Son upon the cross, was it possible for the believer to wait patiently while God’s
longsuffering permitted the wicked to enjoy his temporary success. Nor was the longsuffering of
God properly understood until Jesus came to earth to teach His love to men.
 34
The Books of Wisdom: Job and Proverbs

Job

AS TO THE MEANING of the name Job (˒Iyyôḇ, in Hebrew), it probably comes from a root
meaning “come back,” or “repent,” and hence may signify “one who turns back” (to God). This
interpretation is based upon the Arabic ˒āba, “repent” or “go back” (often followed by the phrase
˒ila ˒llāhi, “to God”). The older Arabic spelling of the name seems to have been ˒Awwābun in
the Arabic Bible (as translated by Cornelius Van Dyck) it is ˒ayyûbu. It is found in Akkadian
inscriptions as Ayyabum, for instance, in the Mari documents of the eighteenth century B.C. In
the Amarna Letters the name appears as Ayab (a prince of Pella). Interestingly enough, this name
even occurs in the Berlin Execration Texts (written in Egyptian hieratic) as the appellation of a
prince in the region of Damascus during the nineteenth century (cf. BASOR no. 82 [1941], p.
36). Another possible etymology for ˒Iyyôḇ is “the assailed one,” from the Hebrew ˒āyēb, “to
hate, be at enmity” (so Koehler-Baumgartner), or else, “object of enmity” (so Brown-Driver-
Briggs, Lexicon). But it is worth noting, in favor of the Arabic etymology, that Job was a native
of North Arabia, and the whole setting of the story is Arabic rather than Hebrew.

The Theme of Job

This book deals with the theoretical problem of pain and disaster in the life of the godly. It
undertakes to answer the question, Why do the righteous suffer? This answer comes in a
threefold form: (1) God is worthy of love even apart from the blessings He bestows; (2) God
may permit suffering as a means of purifying and strengthening the soul in godliness; (3) God’s
thoughts and ways are moved by considerations too vast for the puny mind of man to
comprehend. Even though man is unable to see the issues of life with the breadth and vision of
the Almighty; nevertheless God really knows what is best for His own glory and for our ultimate
good. This answer is given against the background of the stereotyped views of Job’s three
“comforters,” Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
An adequate psychological motive for their persistence in carrying on the controversy with Job
over so many chapters is to be found in the dilemma into which his catastrophic disaster had
placed them. If a man of such high reputation for godliness could suffer so devastating a
misfortune, their own security was imperiled by the possibility that the same thing could happen
to themselves. Their basic motive in attempting to elicit from Job a confession of sin was to
bolster their own sense of security. If in point of fact Job had been guilty of some grievous sin of
which the public had no knowledge, his overwhelming disasters could be easily understood as
the retribution of the righteous God from whom no secrets could be hidden. Failing to secure
from him any such confession despite all their diligent efforts to compel from him an admission
of guilt, they felt unable to return home relieved and reassured that calamity would be kept from
their door if they only “lived a good life.” Hence they stayed with him in a continuing effort to
extract from him the admission of some well-hidden but heinous transgression.

Outline of Job

I. Prologue: Job’s test, 1:1–2:13

II. False comfort by the three friends, 3:1–31:40

A. First cycle of speeches, 3:1–14:22
1. Job’s lament, 3:1–26
2. Eliphaz’ reply, 4:1–5:27; and Job’s rejoinder, 6:1–7:21
3. Bildad’s reply, 8:1–22; and Job’s rejoinder, 9:1–10:22
4. Zophar’s reply, 11:1–20; and Job’s rejoinder, 12:1–14:22
B. Second cycle of speeches, 15:1–21:34
1. Eliphaz’ reply, 15:1–35; and Job’s rejoinder, 16:1–17:16
2. Bildad’s reply, 18:1–21; and Job’s rejoinder, 19:1–29
3. Zophar’s reply, 20:1–29; and Job’s rejoinder, 21:1–34
C. Third cycle of speeches, 22:1–31:40
1. Eliphaz’ reply, 22:1–30; and Job’s rejoinder, 23:1–24:25
2. Bildad’s reply, 25:1–6; and Job’s rejoinder, 26:1–31:40
III. The speeches of Elihu, 32:1–37:24
A. First speech: God’s instruction to man through affliction, 32:1–33:33
B. Second speech: God’s Justice and prudence vindicated, 34:1–37
C. Third speech: the advantages of pure and consistent piety, 35:1–16
D. Fourth speech: God’s greatness and Job’s guilt in accusing God of unfairness, 36:1–37:24
IV. God’s speeches from the whirlwind 38:1–42:6
A. First speech: God’s omnipotence proclaimed in creation; Job’s self-condemning
confession, 38:1–40:5
B. Second speech: God’s power and man’s frailty, Job’s humble re-response, 40:6–42:6
V. Epilogue: God’s rebuke of the three comforters; Job’s restoration, and reward of a long and
blessed prolongation of life 42:7–17

Authorship of Job

The text of this book does not indicate its author, and there is no consistent tradition even in
rabbinic circles as to who the composer of this work might have been. The Talmud ventures only
to suggest that the writer must have been someone who lived prior to the time of Moses. There
seems to be nothing in the internal evidence of the text itself to furnish a clue as to the author’s
identity. The commentator Jacques Bolduc (1637) suggested that it may have been secondarily
the work of Moses himself, who found it in an original Aramaic form and felt it worthwhile to
translate into Hebrew. While it can scarcely be said that there is anything Mosaic about the style
of Job, this theory would at least account for (1) its being possessed by the Hebrews, (2) its
attaining a canonical status, (3) its patriarchal flavor and setting, and (4) the Aramaic flavor in
some of the terminology and modes of expression exhibited by the text.

Job: Date of the Events

Inasmuch as Job contains no references to historical events and reflects a non-Hebraic cultural
background concerning which we possess little or no information, it is not easy to assign a
probable date for the lifetime and career of Job. The district of Uz, in which the action took
place, was located in northern Arabia; the Septuagint refers to it as the land of the Aisitai, a
people whom Ptolemy the geographer locates in the Arabian desert adjacent to the Edomites of
Mount Seir. Job’s friend Eliphaz came from Teman, a well known locality in Edom. Elihu came
from the Buzites, who probably lived adjacent to the Chaldeans in northeast Arabia. It is
important to bear this in mind when weighing the force of arguments based upon absence of
Mosaic influence.
J. H. Raven inclines to a pre-Mosaic date because (1) Job indicates a patriarchal family-clan type
of organization far more reminiscent of Abraham’s time than of post-Exodus conditions; (2) the
offering of sacrifice by the head of the family rather than by an official priesthood would also be
pre-Mosaic; (3) the mention of qesɩ̂ ṭâ as a piece of money (Job 42:11) suggests a date at least as
early as Joshua (cf. Josh. 24:32), if not the patriarchal period (cf. Gen. 33:19). But if the scene
was laid in North Arabia near Edom, a clan type of society may well have persisted there as late
as the time of the Hebrew monarchy. Possibly private sacrifices by the heads of families
persisted alongside the official tribal priesthood.
This foreign locale would also account for the comparative rarity of the name Yahweh in most
chapters of the book. Job shows a distinct preference for the pan-Semitic term, ˒Elō˓h or
˒Elōhɩ̂ m, for God. (“Yahweh” occurs twice in chap. 1, once in chap. 2, once in chap. 12, once in
chap. 38, three times in chap. 40, and five times in chap. 42.) Interestingly enough, the title
Shaddai (“the Almighty”) occurs no less than thirty-one times in Job as against its sixteen
occurrences in the rest of the Old Testament. This evidence from the use of the divine names
certainly tends to confirm the theory of a non-Israelite background.
And yet it remains true, apart from the absence of Mosaic influence, that the background of the
story of Job points to a setting in the early second millennium B.C. W. E Albright in his chapter
on the “Old Testament and Archaeology” in the Alleman and Flack Commentary indicates that
the historical Job may well have been contemporary with the patriarchs. His basis for this
conclusion rests partly upon the dubious ground that Ezek. 14:14 couples the names of Job and
Daniel. Albright understands this Daniel to be the ancient Canaanite hero Dan’el, who appears as
a prominent figure in one of the Ugaritic epics, that is, as the idol-worshiping father of Aqhat.
Thus he rejects the possibility that Ezekiel could be referring to his own contemporary, Daniel,
in Babylon. He also points out the fact that the other names in the narrative are authentic for the
second millennium B.C. Thus Bildad was probably shortened from Yabil-Dadum, a name found
in cuneiform sources dating from that period. He also traces a noteworthy resemblance to the
account of the “Babylonian Job,” a cuneiform composition translated in Barton’s AB (i.e.,
Archeology of the Bible). This is the story of a righteous man who underwent the bitterest agony
of body and spirit, even though he was conscious of having lived an upright life, and
nevertheless remained steadfast in the midst of his affliction. Ultimately he was granted a
happier life than ever, to the glory of Marduk, the god of Babylon. This Babylonian account may
go back to 1200 B.C., and may rest upon materials even earlier.

Date of the Composition of Job

A distinction must be drawn between the historical period when Job actually lived and the time
when this record of his ordeal was composed. It might naturally be supposed to have been
written soon after the events themselves. Nevertheless there is the widest divergence of opinion
on this point, some estimates, as we shall see, deferring the time of authorship until after the
Babylonian Exile. In general there are five main views maintained by biblical scholars today: (1)
in the patriarchal age; (2) in the reign of Solomon; (3) in the reign of Manasseh; (4) in the
generation of Jeremiah; (5) during or after the Exile.
1. Before the time of Moses, in the patriarchal age. If the contents of Job are to be regarded as
historically accurate and a faithful transcript of the actual conversations of the five men involved,
it would be natural to assume that this record was composed soon after Job’s restoration to
prosperity, the final addition, 42:16–17, having been completed not long after his decease. If
therefore Job’s career took place before the time of Moses, the book itself must date back to that
same approximate era. This was the view of the Talmud and was widely held by Christian
scholars until modern times.
In our present century there are rather few scholars even among leading Conservatives who
would venture to insist upon a pre-Mosaic date. As has already been pointed out, the fact that the
events take place on non-Israelite soil, that is, in North Arabia, makes the period of composition
difficult to date with any precision. There is no compelling reason why the influence of the
Mosaic Torah should have been felt in Uz or Teman even as late as 1000 B.C. In the absence of
any literature from the same locality it is impossible to do more than conjecture what allusions to
history or law or local custom might have been present in any artistic composition of North
Arabia. If, moreover, the work was composed in the pre-Mosaic period prior to the Hebrew
conquest, it gives rise to the possibility that it was originally composed in some language other
than Hebrew, whether in a North Arabian dialect or possibly in Aramaic, as some have
suggested.
Some critics have pointed to the mention of the worship of the sun and moon in Job 31:26,
feeling that this would exclude a period of composition earlier than the rise of Mesopotamian
cults in the latter days of the Jewish monarchy. It should be remembered, however, that the
worship of the sun and moon had been carried on by Sumerians, Akkadians, and Egyptians from
time immemorial, and the earliest Old South Arabic inscriptions which have survived indicate
vigorous cults of this type flourishing in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula.
There is no evidence of the pre-Mosaic dating of Job due to a total ignorance of the Torah, of
Abraham, Moses, or the nation of Israel in the texts of Job. This is impossible to explain in the
light of total commitment to monotheism which is apparent from all of the conversations
between Job, his three counselors, and Elihu. It is difficult to imagine that they could have totally
ignored the existence of a fairly nearby nation (cf. Hebrews) who were also committed to a
monotheistic concept of God. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the
experience of Job must have taken place prior to the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Some critics have uncovered what they feel to be traces of the influence of the Mosaic law,
especially in Job 24:2–11. This passage mentions (a) the wickedness of keeping pawned clothes
overnight (forbidden in Ex. 22:25); (b) the custom of reserving for the poor the gleaning of the
fields of the rich (prescribed in Lev. 19:9); (c) the wickedness of moving the boundary marker of
a farm (cf. Deut. 19:14). However, a second reading of this passage in Job reveals that it amounts
to only a statement that the poor have been reduced to gleaning the fields of the rich, and that
having pawned their clothes to the wealthy they are forced to sleep naked overnight. This falls
short of invoking any legal sanctions in either case. As for denouncing the moving of a boundary
marker, this was a commonplace sentiment throughout the Fertile Crescent, from Sumeria to the
Nile. Numerous boundary stones have been found from the time of Hammurabi and earlier
invoking divine wrath upon any miscreants who should venture to shift them from position. It
turns out, therefore, that the case for an acquaintance with the Mosaic code cannot be sustained
for the book of Job.
The absence of any demonstrable knowledge of the existence of the Mosaic code is of utmost
significance. Furthermore there is a complete unawareness of any other monotheistic culture to
be found in any adjacent region of western Asia than that represented by Uz, Teman, Shuah on
the Euphrates and Naamah (from which the three comforters had come). Surely if the Hebrew
nation, devoted to the exclusive worship of the same God (El, Eloah, Elyah, Shaddai and
Yahweh) had already settled in nearby Canaan, some allusion to them would surely be expected
in the conversations between Job and his counselors. Why is there no awareness whatever of
Abraham, Isaac or Jacob or Moses or Joshua? Every other book in the Old Testament
presupposes Abraham and the Torah and God’s covenant with Israel. How can Job center
attention upon God and the basic principles of theology without any cognizance of Israel and
God’s Lordship over this monotheistic nation? The only reasonable explanation for this is that
the episode of Job’s trial and the written record of his experience was written down before the
conquest of Canaan by Joshua and before the departure of Israel from Egyptian bondage. This
implies that the original composition was written in a language other than Hebrew, even though
it was later translated into the form which has been preserved in the Hebrew Bible. If so, it turns
out that Job is actually the earliest book in the Bible, and that it was included in a Hebrew
translation as a part of Scripture because of its perceived value as solving the age-long problem
of how undeserved suffering can befall even sincere and godly believers.
2. In the reign of Solomon. This view was advocated as early as the time of Gregory Nazianzen
(fourth century A.D.) and also by Martin Luther, Haevernick, Keil, and Franz Delitzsch. In the
conservative handbooks on Old Testament introduction, it is favored by Raven, Young, and
Unger. The grounds adduced for this dating fall generally under these heads: (a) Solomon’s age
was one of prosperous leisure in which literary pursuits were practiced against a background of
national self-realization; (b) the age of Solomon devoted particular interest to ḥoḵmâ and
pondered the deepest practical problems of life; (c) there is a similar exaltation of godly wisdom
in Proverbs 8 to that which appears in Job 28; (d) a fairly extensive knowledge of foreign
countries, or at least of conditions which existed throughout the Near East generally, indicates a
wider acquaintance with the contemporary world than North Arabian conditions would
presuppose. In Solomon’s time, of course, there was the widest acquaintance with the foreign
nations even as remote as India, which enjoyed commercial relations with the Hebrew empire. It
cannot be denied that these considerations possess a certain cumulative force; yet it is
questionable whether they can be regarded as really conclusive, for most of the four features
above mentioned are reconcilable with an earlier date as well, particularly if the account was
composed by a non-Israelite author on non-Israelite soil.
A problem immediately presents itself to the conservative scholar as soon as he settles upon a
Solomonic date for the composition of this book. If the events themselves took place four
centuries or more before Job was written—and most of these writers consider Job to have lived
at least as early as the time of Moses—then it is dffficult to see how an accurate record could
have been maintained of the actual remarks expressed by Job and his four counselors. Delitzsch
therefore suggests that the book was not meant to be a historically accurate transcript of words
actually spoken in the patriarchal period, but that it was probably intended as a drama for which
the dialogue had been composed by the author. Such a drama would be historically accurate only
as a play based, for example, upon the life of Abraham Lincoln might artistically represent the
man’s character and what he stood for without purporting to be a reporter’s transcript of remarks
that he actually voiced. Delitzsch contends that no Hebrew reader would have understood the
speeches in Job as a verbatim report, since the narrative was put into a poetic, dramatic form. Yet
even as drama, Job is not to be dismissed as mere fiction, for the author may well have composed
it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and accurately represented the sentiments and
theological opinions historically expressed by the parties concerned. It was simply that the
dramatic or poetic form in which they were composed was the product of the literary artist. If,
then, the book did not purport really to be a reporter’s transcript and would not have been so
understood by the ancient reader, it should be understood and interpreted by the modern reader in
the light of the author’s original intention.
In support of this interpretation it certainly must be conceded that the text of Job does not read
like an ordinary conversation such as would be carried on under usual circumstances. Apart from
the introductory and the concluding chapters, the main body of the text reads like a poetic and
highly artistic composition, employing language which would not normally be used by persons
speaking extemporaneously in a real life situation. In this respect Job may be put in a different
category from the other books in the Old Testament which purport to give a narrative of
historical events, particularly if the original speakers were expressing themselves in a language
other than Hebrew—as indeed they must have. Thus the ancient reader for whose spiritual
benefit the book was composed would naturally expect a certain amount of artistic license in the
literary form in which the speakers’ sentiments and opinions were expressed.
3. In the reign of Manasseh, seventh century B.C. This was an age of moral degeneracy and social
injustice, a time when questions concerning divine providence would call for anxious scrutiny,
with error on the throne and truth on the scaffold. Therefore the prominence given to the
suffering of the innocent and the prevalence of misfortune and calamity, “The earth is given into
the hands of the wicked” (Job 9:24), accords well with the time of King Manasseh.
Ewald and Hitzig were outstanding proponents of this view. But as Raven points out (OTI, p.
277), these allusions in Job do not indicate any more widespread misfortune than could be found
in many periods in Hebrew history, or indeed in human experience generally. The author quite
clearly is referring to the hardships of individuals here and there as exemplified by Job himself,
who in his despondency over private disasters naturally tended to emphasize these darker aspects
of calamity which can befall any man in this life. There is no suggestion whatsoever that national
misfortunes are referred to or that what is afflicting Job is intended to be parabolic for the
distress of Israel generally.
4. The period of Jeremiah in the late seventh century B.C. This is the view of J. E. Steinmueller
(CSS, 2:165), who feels that there is a striking similarity in both contents and language between
Job and the writings of Jeremiah (cf. Jer. 12:1–3 and Job 21:7; Jer. 20:14–18 and Job 3:3). He
thinks it significant that the land of Uz is mentioned outside of Job only in Jer. 25:20 and Lam.
4:21. Yet this evidence can scarcely be called compelling; the similarities referred to are quite
vague in character and consist of commonplace sentiments which can be found in the writings of
many ancient authors. The problem of the prosperity of the wicked (Job 21:7–15) was more
thoroughly discussed in Ps. 37 (which was presumably Davidic and therefore early tenth century)
than in the Jeremiah passage (Jer. 12:1–3). While it is true that the curse which Jeremiah invokes
upon the day he was born (Jer. 20:14) bears a close similarity to Job 3:3, it is far more likely that
Jeremiah borrowed from Job than the other way around. If in Jeremiah’s time the book of Job
was known and acknowledged as Holy Scripture, it is altogether likely that the unhappy prophet
would have found in it many a sentiment which accorded with his own mood. The fact that Uz is
mentioned in Jer. 25:20 is hardly of pivotal significance, unless it can be proved by other
evidence that the name had not arisen until the age of Jeremiah or else was completely unknown
to the Hebrews before his time.
5. The Babylonian Exile, sixth century B.C. This view is advocated by Genung in ISBE, who
classifies the book of Job as mere legend if not outright fiction. He interprets it as reflecting at
least indirectly the long imprisonment and eventual release of King Jehoiachin. (It should be
noted, however, that Jehoiachin’s career bears little analogy to that of Job; there is no evidence
that Jehoiachin was any more godly than his wicked father, Jehoiakim, nor was he restored to his
kingdom at any time prior to his death. He was simply granted more pleasant conditions during
his confinement in Babylon.) Genung regards Job 12:17–25 as suggesting the wholesale
deportation of eminent persons or even of whole nations, as if the author had actually witnessed
the tragic events of 587 B.C. Thus Job 12:17–19, 23 reads: “He leadeth counselors away stripped,
and Judges maketh he fools. He looseth the bond of kings, and bindeth their loins with a girdle.
He leadeth priests away stripped, and overthroweth the mighty … He enlargeth the nations, and
he leadeth them captive” (ASV). Yet it should be pointed out that generalizations of this sort
would be appropriate to almost every normal period of Near Eastern history; such scenes as these
were repeated every time a fortified city was stormed. Therefore this passage would be perfectly
appropriate even in the time of Abraham in the violent age in which he lived (cf. Gen. 14).
Driver, Budde, and Cheyne seek to buttress the argument for an exilic or post-exilic date of Job
by pointing out resemblances with Deutero-Isaiah (which they would date about 550–540 B.C.).
These resemblances include: (a) the extraordinarily developed form of morality and of the
doctrine of God discoverable in Job; (b) the basic analogy between the suffering of the innocent
Job and that of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah II; (c) the points of contact between Job and
Jeremiah already discussed in connection with Steinmueller’s theory.
As to (a), it should be observed that neither the ethical standards nor the portrait of God can be
regarded as any more “advanced” (if this question-begging term may be used) than that
displayed in what critics have assigned to document D or in the Davidic psalms. This type of
argument can appeal only to those who are committed to the presuppositions of Wellhausen’s
theory of the evolutionary development of Israel’s religion. As far as (b) is concerned, the
resemblance between Job and the suffering Servant is superficial indeed. While it is true that
both suffered innocently—a commonplace in world literature—yet there was nothing redemptive
or vicarious about the afflictions of Job as there was in the case of the suffering Servant. These
arguments therefore seem to be quite weak and inconclusive except to those who are committed
to the Development Hypothesis of Israel’s religion.

Job: Integrity of the Text

From the time of Eichhorn there has been a growing tendency among rationalist critics to deny
the single authorship of Job. There has been a general trend toward regarding the speeches of Job
and his three comforters as being the earliest portion of the work, and to regard as later additions
the four sections which are described below.
1. The prologue and the epilogue. From the obvious ground that the first and last chapters of the
book are composed in prose, it has been argued that they must have been composed by a
different author from the artist who produced the poetic chapters. As Steinmueller points out
(CSS, 2:166), however, the literature of neighboring nations exhibited the same phenomenon.
Thus the Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian “Tale of the Eloquent Peasant” dating from around 1900 B.C.
likewise possessed a prose prologue and a prose epilogue as a framework for the long, poetic text
which made up the body of the work. So also the Aramaic Wisdom of Ahikar has a prose
introduction to its poetic proverbs.
It has also been argued that the mood and viewpoint of the prologue and epilogue of Job differ
from those of the rest of the book. However, if we consider the particular purpose of the
prologue and epilogue, it would be very strange if their mood and viewpoint did not differ from
that prevailing in the dialogue between Job and his friends. It is the basic purpose of the
introductory chapter to present Job’s situation from the divine perspective as a contest between
God and Satan, in which the issue at stake is whether a man is capable of loving God for His
own sake rather than merely for the blessings He bestows. The final chapter presents the eventual
outcome of Job’s period of testing. After the situation of agonizing trial has given way to a new
prosperity and success, it would have been highly unrealistic on the part of the author had he
attempted to maintain the same viewpoint and mood throughout the entire book. Moreover, as an
increasing number of critics are coming to see, the dialogue of Job would be lacking in any
adequate motivation if the prologue had not introduced it right from the beginning. Likewise also
the epilogue is absolutely essential for the final vindication of Job’s righteousness, and it is
therefore hard to believe that the dialogue could have originally circulated without the final
chapter. Even Aage Bentzen concedes: “The dialogue cannot have had any independent
existence. In 8:4–29:1 it presupposes the description of Job’s illness as given in the narrative”
(IOT, 2:175).
2. Chapters 27 and 28. Adherents to the multiple-source theory often single out chapter 27 as an
interpolation, because it contains a denunciation of the wicked far more in harmony with what
the three comforters have been saying in the earlier chapters than with the defensive position Job
has maintained. Repeatedly Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have been discoursing upon the
inevitable punishment of the wicked and have been urging Job to come out with a confession of
secret sin. But on the other hand it should be recognized that Job himself at no point offers any
defense for the sinner or holds out any hope for him that he would escape God’s judgment in the
final outcome. Actually what he does in chapter 27 is skillfully turn the tables on his unjust
accusers who have dogmatically insisted that his calamity must be a consequence of hidden and
unconfessed sin. Then, insisting on his own unqualified adherence to the cause of righteousness,
decency, and justice, Job very logically passes on to express his expectation that his slanderous
accusers will themselves taste the fruit of their injustice in blackening his character (v. 7: “Let
mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous”).
As for chapter 28, it is urged that this constitutes a unit by itself which is not logically related to
what precedes or what follows. But this criticism is not well taken, for Job’s analysis of what
constitutes true wisdom is evidently intended as a rebuke and a rebuttal to the narrow-minded
and shortsighted “wisdom” on which his so-called comforters had preened themselves. Job’s
testimony here is eminently appropriate as a summary of his basic theological conviction and
abiding trust in God, even when His ways were hard for man to understand. In this chapter,
therefore, Job shows that true and valid wisdom does not reside in them nor indeed in any man,
but only in the Lord Himself and what He has revealed. Even his final axiom, “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” carries the connotation that his three accusers had gone astray
at the very outset of their thinking because they lacked a genuine fear of the Lord in their attitude
toward Job’s divinely permitted calamities.
3. The speeches of Elihu (chaps. 32–37). Many critics object that this young disputant is not
mentioned in the prologue (2:11) when the other three are introduced, nor is he alluded to either
in the speeches of Jehovah (chaps. 38–42), or in the epilogue itself. It is therefore deduced that
he must have been an invention of a later contributor to the Job legend, inserted into the account
in order to present a more satisfactory theological viewpoint than could be found in the speeches
of the other four speakers. Some critics have even argued that Elihu adds nothing new to the
discussion, but either repeats what the three friends have already said or else anticipates what
God is going to say.
In reply to these objections, it may be pointed out that chapter 32 makes it perfectly dear that
Elihu was not one of the original participants in the discussion when it first began back in
chapter 2, but that he happened in on the conversation at a later time after it had already well
begun. If this was the case, it is hard to see why he should have been mentioned in the prologue
at all. So far as the speeches of Jehovah in the epilogue are concerned, there is no particular
reason for Elihu to be mentioned in either section if he had uttered nothing that was worthy of
correction. It was because the three comforters had misrepresented God’s nature and providence
that they received the divine rebuke. Nor is it accurate to allege that Elihu simply repeated what
the other three had already said; otherwise he would not be represented by the author as chiding
them. It is true that Elihu had to repeat much of what they had already brought out in order to
evaluate that measure of truth which they had on their side, but this was intended only as a
groundwork for making his own position clear. Elihu’s contribution was to rebuke their pharisaic
explanation of all misfortune as necessarily a punishment for personal sin. In fact, it may be
fairly said that Elihu’s remarks serve admirably to prepare the way for the theophany of the final
chapters.
It is also alleged that from the linguistic standpoint, Elihu’s speeches contain so many
Aramaisms as to indicate a different author from the one who composed the rest of the book. But
this assertion is difficult to maintain on a statistical basis. As Steinmueller points out (CSS, 2:1–
7), there are only twelve Aramaisms to be found in these chapters (32–37), whereas there are a
good twenty-six in the rest of the book. The most that can be said is that the percentage of
Aramaisms is slightly higher, but not enough to indicate the necessity of a different author. Also
it is alleged that Elihu’s style and language markedly differ from those of the other speakers in
Job. Even if this point be granted, it is difficult to see why, when the author presents a distinct
and different personality, he should not show that distinctiveness even in his style of speech. On
the other hand, the alleged differences cannot be pressed too far, for the general vocabulary of
Elihu’s remarks is about the same as that of all the other speakers. Some of the favorite words of
the author scarcely found in the rest of the Old Testament are shared by both Elihu and the three
comforters.
4. The speeches of Jehovah (38:1–42:6). It is alleged that these pronouncements of God bear
little connection with the remarks of Job and his visitors in the earlier part of the book, and their
style and mood present very marked contrasts. But it should be recognized that it is the very
purpose of the author to present marked contrasts between God and mankind. It would be very
strange if the contrasts were any less pronounced than they are. God reminds Job that he cannot
be competent to administer providence until he could show an intelligent understanding of the
management of the physical universe at the level of meteorology and of the birds of the air and
the beasts of the field. He could not do valid “exegesis” if he could not even read the elementary
alphabet of God’s physical universe.
As for the distinctive motifs featuring Behemoth and Leviathan (generally equated with the
hippopotamus and the crocodile), it should be noted that Leviathan is also mentioned in 3:8, and
that several other distinctive ideas occur in these chapters which have already made their
appearance in the earlier speeches. If these pronouncements by God were removed from the
book, it is safe to say that it would be left without a climax, the sublimest sections would be
missing from this literary masterpiece, and the basic problem of pain would remain altogether
unsolved. We therefore conclude that each portion and division of Job is necessary to make up
the architectonic structure which the author has so skillfully employed.
A final word should be said concerning the divergent interpretations of Job 19:26. The KJV
seems to indicate that Job entertained a hope of the resurrection of the body. There are, however,
many critics who insist that the correct interpretation of the original Hebrew indicates no more
than a vindication of the soul after death in a perfectly disembodied state; thus the RSV, “And
after my skin has been thus destroyed, then without my flesh I shall see God.” (This is to be
contrasted with the KJV. “Yet in my flesh shall I see God.”) Here the interpretation hinges upon
the meaning of the preposition min, which sometimes does signify “without”; yet it is fair to say
that in connection with the verb to see, (ḥāzâ) min in its usage elsewhere almost always indicates
the vantage point from which the observer looks. It is fair to conclude that a Hebrew listener
would have understood this statement to mean, “And from the vantage point of my flesh, I shall
see God.”

Proverbs

The Hebrew title of this book is Miše1ê Šelōmōh—“The Proverbs of Solomon.” The term for
“proverb” is māšāl which comes from a root idea meaning “parallel” or “similar,” and hence
signifies “a description by way of comparison.” The term is then applied to figurative speech of
an epigrammatic or prophetic character, such as the oracles of Balaam (Num. 23:7).
 Outline of Proverbs

I. Title and purpose, 1:1–6

The object of this book is to be practical, bearing upon moral edification (vv. 3–5) and intellectual
truth (v. 6).
II. Fifteen lessons on wisdom, 1:7–9:18
A book of admonition for youth. The prevailing form is the extended māšāl song.
1. 1:7–19
2. 1:20–33
3. 2:1–22
4. 3:1–18
5. 3:19–26
6. 3:27–35
7. 4:1–5:6
8. 5:7–23
9. 6:1–5
10. 6:6–11
11. 6:12–19
12. 6:20–35
13. 7:1–27
14. 8:1–36
15. 9:1–18
Not all these songs possess internal coherence, yet they somehow compose an internal unity, with
a well-arranged multiformity.
III. Additional proverbs of Solomon, 10:1–22:16
A series of approximately 375 short maxims. They are not grouped according to a comprehensive
plan, except for certain sections which contain a series linked together by common characteristics
or analogies. All these mešālɩ̂ m are distichs predominantly antithetic in nature, although there are
some synonymous parallelisms as well (cf. 11:7, 25, 30; 12:14, 28; 14:19). There are quite a few
which are synthetic or integral, especially those with the min of comparison (e.g., 12:9; 15:16, 17;
16:8, 19; 17:10, etc.) or with the phrase ˒aphkɩ̂ , much more (11:31; 15:11; 17:7; 19:7, etc.).
IV. The sayings of the wise, first series, 22:17–24:22 (apparently edited by Solomon)
This section includes all types of māšāl distichs (22:18; 23:9; 24:7, 8, 9, 10), tetrastichs (22:22,
24, 26; 23:10; 23:15, 17; 24:1, 3, etc.), pentastichs (23:4; 24:13), and hexastichs (23:1–3, 12–14,
19–21, 26–28; 24:11).
The “wise men” perhaps refer to those mentioned in 1 Kings 4:31 as background sources for what
was composed by King Solomon.
V. The sayings of the wise, second series, 24:23–34
This section contains one hexastich (24:23b–25), one distich (24:26), a tristich (24:27), a
tetrastich (24:28), and a māšāl ode (24:30–34) dealing with the slugard.
VI. Proverbs of Solomon, recorded by the committee of Hezekiah, 25:1–29:27
This section is not arranged according to any observable plan, yet it contains occasional series of
related proverbs (e.g., 26:1–12, 13–16, 20–22). In chapters 25–27 the prevailing type of
 parallelism is not the antithetic, but rather the parabolic (the “as-so” type, such as 26:1) and the
emblematic (where the “as-so” particles are omitted; cf. 25:4). Antithetic parallelisms are more
frequent in chapters 28 and 29; yet there are also a good many of the comparative and figurative
type as well. It is noteworthy that several proverbs or portions of proverbs are repeated from
section III. Some are perfectly identical (25:24 = 21:9; 26:22 = 18:8; 27:12 = 22:3; etc.), while
others are identical in meaning although with slightly changed phraseology (26:13 = 22:13; 26:15
= 19:24; 28:6 = 19:1, etc.).
VII. The sayings of Agur ben Jakeh, 30:1–33
This chapter has an unusual number of the middah type (middah means “measure or allotted
number”) such as verses 15–17; “There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things
say not, It is enough,” etc.
VII. The sayings of Lemuel, 31:1–9
A warning to rulers against the use of liquor, and an exhortation to integrity in judgment.
IX. The perfect wife, 31:10–31
The standards of virtue and accomplishment by which a godly wife may evaluate her life.

Terms for “Wisdom” in Proverbs

The purpose of a book of proverbs is to instruct in the principles of wisdom. There are three
major terms for wisdom employed throughout this work: ḥoḵmâ, bɩ̄nâ, and tûšiyyâ.
1. Ḥoḵmâ (“wisdom”) the term most frequently used, pertains not so much to the realm of
theoretical knowledge or philosophy as to a proper grasp of the basic issues of life and of the
relationship of God to man as a moral agent. This kind of “wisdom” involves a proper
discernment between good and evil, between virtue and vice, between duty and self-indulgence.
It also includes prudence in secular matters and a skill in the accomplishment of business affairs
as well as in interpersonal relationships. It implies an ability to apply theory to practice in real-
life situations, consistently applying that which we know to that which we have to do.
2. Bɩ̄nâ (“understanding”) connotes the ability to discern intelligently the difference between
sham and reality, between truth and error, between the specious attraction of the moment and the
long-range values that govern a truly successful life. The root idea of this term is found in the
related preposition bên, meaning “between;” hence there is always an analytical or judgmental
factor involved and the ability to distinguish between the valid and the invalid, the false and the
true.
3. Tûšiyyâ (“sound wisdom, efficient wisdom,” or, in a derived sense, “abiding success”). This
term conceives of wisdom as an authentic insight into, or intuition of, spiritual or psychological
truth. It focuses upon the ability of the human mind to rise from below to a grasp of divine reality
above, so to speak, rather than the wisdom of a prophetic revelation that comes down
supernaturally from heaven. It points to the activity of the believer’s mind by which he is able to
deduce from what God has revealed the manner in which these principles are to be applied in
everyday situations of life (cf. Prov. 3:21; 8:14; 18:1; and also in the sense of help or
deliverance, Prov. 2:7).
It should be noted that the characteristic type of māšāl or proverb in this book is the balanced
antithesis which incisively contrasts the wise man and the fool, the good man and the wicked,
true value and false appearance, in such a way as to set forth the two sides of the truth in clearest
opposition to each other and thus perform an incisive didactic function. The constant
preoccupation of the book is with the elemental antinomies of obedience versus rebellion,
industry versus laziness, prudence versus presumption, and so on. These are so presented as to
put before the reader a clear-cut choice, leaving him no ground for wretched compromise or
vacillating indecision.

TERMS FOR WISDOM

H̥oḵmâ practical ability to apply theory to practice

Bɩ̄nâ ability to discern intellectually between truth

and error

Tûšiyyâ sound wisdom, efficient wisdom as an

authentic intuition of the spiritual or
psychological

Authorship and Date, of Composition of Proverbs

1. The following sections of Proverbs seem to be attributed to Solomon the son of David: (a)
1:1–9:18, according to 1:1; (b) 10:1–22:16, according to 10:1; (c) 25:1–29:27, according to 25:1,
although selected and published by a committee under the appointment of King Hezekiah (728–
697 B.C.). It should be remembered that according to 1 Kings 4:32, Solomon’s original collection
of Proverbs numbered no less than three thousand. Since canonical Proverbs contains only 800
verses, it is obvious that the original Solomonic writings (secs. I, II, III) contained ample
material for later excerpters.
2. Two sections (chaps. 22–24, IV and V in outline) are attributed to the “wise men” (ḥaḵāmɩ̂ m),
who are not otherwise specified but who probably belonged to the same class referred to in 1
Kings 4:31. There is every reason to believe that they antedated Solomon himself and that he
was responsible for assembling this anthology under his own editorship.
3. The sayings of Agur the son of Jakeh (chap. 30) are of uncertain origin, inasmuch as we have
no information whatever as to Jakeh’s historical, geographical, or even ethnic background.
4. The sayings of King Lemuel are certainly of non-Israelite origin, but it is reasonable to
suppose that he was a North Arabian prince, living possibly in an area not far from Uz, who still
cherished a faith in the one true God. So far as Prov. 31:10–31 is concerned, it is ambiguous
whether this beautiful description of the perfect wife is attributed to King Lemuel or to some
other. The fact, however, that it is composed as an acrostic or alphabetic poem of twenty-two
lines shows that it is a separate composition and its style bears little resemblance to the first nine
verses of chapter 31.

Critical Theories of Authorship and Date of Proverbs

Using as their principal criterion an evolutionary theory of the development of Hebrew thought,
the Liberal critics have tended to deny to the Solomonic period a large portion if not all of the
material attributed by the text to King Solomon himself. Thus Driver, Nowack, and A. B.
Davidson regard chapters 1–9 as composed shortly before the Exile, about three and a half
centuries later than Solomon’s reign. These critics concede that Solomon may have written some
portions of chapters 10–22, which they regard as the oldest nucleus of the book, but the whole
collection reached its present form only in the seventh century B.C. The section 22:17–24:34 is
thought to have originated in the post-exilic period (on the supposition of its being derived from
the Wisdom of Amenemope, which will be discussed later). Possibly chapters 25–29 were
composed at about the same time. Last of all, chapters 30 and 31 were added at a substantially
later period. In this connection it should be noted that some moderate conservative critics, like
Genung in the ISBE, put chapters 22–24 at an earlier period than chapters 1–9. But they see no
reason for postponing the substantial completion of Proverbs beyond the reign of Hezekiah. Even
chapters 30 and 31 may have been added at that same period, since their foreign origin would
sufficiently account for differences in language and tone as compared with the rest of the book.
More radical critics such as C. H. Toy, the author of the ICC commentary on Proverbs (1899),
come to the conclusion that nothing in Proverbs dates from a period earlier than 350 B.C., and
that the later material was contributed some time in the second century. Toy advances the
following six arguments to support this view:
1. Since Solomon was said by Jewish tradition to be the author of Proverbs, Song of Solomon
(cf. 1 Kings 4:30–34), Ecclesiastes, and two of the Psalms, it is apparent that he had become the
symbol of wisdom and the patron saint of all philosophical or nonliturgical poetry (just as Moses,
e.g., had become the symbol of Hebrew law). In the course of time it became conventional to
attribute such compositions to Solomon, even though they were of late manufacture, in order that
they might gain wider acceptance with the credulous Jewish public. This certainly must have
been the motivation for attributing the apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon, which was
quite obviously composed in Greek, to the ancient paragon of Hebrew philosophy.
It is of course perfectly apparent that in the intertestamental period it became fashionable to
compose didactic or apocalyptic works which were attributed, ostensibly at least, to ancient
patriarchs like Enoch or the twelve sons of Jacob. But there is no good evidence that such a
procedure was ever followed in pre-Hellenistic Israel. The primary question to settle would seem
to be, How did Solomon ever get this reputation for proverbial and wisdom literature if in fact he
never composed any? It is far more logical to conclude that he gained the reputation because he
was the first to compose this type of literature on a classical standard rather than assuming that
the tradition was utterly without foundation. Thus in Greek literature the existence of the later
epic poetry falsely attributed to Homer by no means demonstrates that Homer never composed
any epic poetry of his own (i.e., the Iliad and the Odyssey). The same is true of the large body of
lyric poetry attributed to Anacreon. The existence of such productions does not prove there never
was such a person as Anacreon who composed the earlier poetry attributed to his name. It is
therefore difficult to see how the tenth-century Solomon could have acquired such a high
reputation as a classical model for ḥoḵmâ literature if he never composed any of his own.
2. Toy also deduces a post-exilic origin from the assumption of pure monotheism which seems to
be applied throughout Proverbs. (Liberal higher critics have held in the past that by a process of
religious evolution, true monotheism appeared late in Israel.) This approach necessarily involves
a complete ignoring of the abundant textual evidence of the Old Testament records that the
Israelite people were strictly monotheistic from the days of the patriarchs and always regarded
idolatry as a heretical or apostate deviation from their covenant relationship to Jehovah.
3. There is a noteworthy lack of distinctive national traits observable in the text of Proverbs.
From this, Toy deduces that the nation was already scattered to foreign regions, as was the case
after the fall of Jerusalem. On the other hand, however, it is far more probable that this lack of
distinctive national traits is to be explained (a) as part of the genius of the ḥoḵmâ genre itself,
which is concerned with individuals as such, rather than with nations, and deals with the laws of
human behavior as observable among almost all the ancient Near Eastern peoples: (b) as
resulting from the central location of Israel between the cultures of Mesopotamia, Syria,
Phoenicia, North Arabia, and Egypt. It was inevitable that there should be extensive cultural
interplay from the earliest stages of Israel’s career as a nation.
4. Proverbs is said to reflect the social manners and vices which are known to have existed after
the Exile, especially in the urban centers of Judah. This, however, must be regarded as a very
dubious generalization. No proof has been adduced that a single custom or vice mentioned in
Proverbs was unknown to the culture of Jerusalem or the other large cities of Israel during
Solomon’s reign.
5. The constant assumption in Proverbs that virtue is to be identified with knowledge and
wickedness is equivalent to ignorance is supposed by Liberal critics to reflect the Hellenic
approach to moral philosophy as exemplified by Plato in his Dialogues (ca. 370 B.C.). It argued
out that knowledge of this Greek approach to the problems of ethics would have come to the
Near East only after the Alexandrian conquest (ca. 330 B.C.). However, this interpretation
involves a basic misunderstanding of the fundamental distinction between Greek sophia and
Hebrew ḥoḵmâ. Greek philosophy tended to be speculative and concerned with cosmogony and
the underlying constituent principles of the universe. Hebrew philosophy, however, as
formulated in the Old Testament, was concerned rather with understanding the implications of
the revealed will of God for the problems and choices of daily life. Whereas Greek philosophy
tended toward a dialectical deduction from first principles arrived at by purely intellectual
induction, Hebrew philosophy was more intuitive and analogical, endeavoring to interpret the
moral order in the light of a personal, omniscient, and omnipotent God, who had revealed His
will for ethical living.
As for the relationship between ignorance and sin, the Platonic concept of moral ignorance was
intellectual and mental, whereas the Solomonic concept in Proverbs recognized in man a certain
darkness of the soul resulting from an immoral prior choice of heart. Moral philosophy among
the Greeks did not really come to grips with the problem of radical evil in man or his capacity to
acknowledge in theory the truth of righteousness, and yet to choose evil out of a perverse self-
interest. One of the characteristic terms for “folly” in Proverbs is nebālâ˒ which suggests the
example of Nabal, whose story is related in 1 Sam. 25. Verse 25 of that chapter judges him a
“fool” (nābāl), not because he was not intelligent enough to figure out that virtue is a more
successful means to attain personal happiness than wickedness can possibly be, but rather
because he made a wrong choice in the moral realm: to requite David’s friendliness with a
miserly and vilifying ingratitude.
6. Toy dismisses the book of Proverbs as the product of a professional caste of wise men, who
also were responsible for Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. But as we
have previously pointed out, the existence of a later caste presupposes a founder. Just as the
prophets would be incomprehensible without a prior Moses, whose law they interpreted and
applied to the problems of their own generation, so also there must have been a classical model
for written proverbial literature before any caste of practitioners could have arisen. Compare Jer.
18:18, which speaks of the wise men as a class of experts on a par with priests and prophets in
the pre-exilic generation. There can be no question that wisdom literature had a very early origin
in the history of Egypt, going back at least to Ipuwer in the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2500 B.C.) or the
Second Intermediate Period (1780–1550 B.C.). It is also evident from 1 Kings 4:30 that there was
a long tradition of pre-Solomonic sages in Israel, and it is quite unwarranted to hold that the tenth
century was too early for this kind of literature to have arisen among the Hebrew people.
In this connection it is appropriate to quote the remarks of W. E Albright (Wisdom in Israel and
in the Ancient Near East, 1955, p. 4):
In the course of the past century a curious myth has arisen that the Age of Wise Men, who are
supposed to have flourished in the Achaemenian and early Hellenistic periods, dates to about the
fifth to third centuries B.C. We may freely admit that the Book of Proverbs was not edited in
approximately its present form until about the fifth century B.C. without assuming that any
material of post-Exilic date is included in the book. But the content of Proverbs is considerably
older, and it is entirely possible that aphorisms and even longer sections go back into the Bronze
Age in substantially their present form. Cullen I. K. Story has shown in a Johns Hopkins study
[cf. Journal of Biblical Literature, 64, 1945, pp. 319–337] that the metric style of Proverbs often
agrees entirely with that of the Ugaritic epics as analyzed by C. H. Gordon. Story has given
numerous examples of different categories; the number might easily be increased several times.
Albright goes on to cite a series of significant parallels, for instance, Proverbs 10:26 (“As
vinegar to the teeth, /And as smoke to the eyes, /So is the sluggard to them that send him”) and
the Baal Epic I Ab, Gordon No. 49 (“Like the feeling of a wild cow for her calf, /like the feeling
of a wild ewe for her lamb, /So was the feeling of Anath for Baal”). Here we have in each case a
tricolon whose third member differs from the two preceding in such a way as to produce a
climactic effect. Another type is the bicolon, which omits a word parallel to an outstanding word
in the first column, as for instance, Prov. 27:2 (“Let a stranger praise thee, and not thy mouth; /A
foreigner and not thy lips”) and I Aqhat I, 1:13 (“From his mouth let the message go forth, /From
his lips the word”).
It should be mentioned that in this same article Albright notes that these poetic forms common to
Proverbs and the Ugaritic literature are totally absent from the Aramaic wisdom literature of the
seventh century B.C. as represented by the Sayings of Aḥiqar. He states, “We must accordingly
date the content of Proverbs as a whole well before Ahiqar and look to the earliest Canaanite
sources for its metrical stylistic structure as well as for direct Canaanite prototypes of many
individual proverbs and bodies of material.” He then goes on to mention that Umberto Cassuto
isolated forty pairs of words in parallelism which appear both in Hebrew wisdom literature and
in the Ugaritic texts. These were augmented by thirty more examples pointed out by Cassuto’s
pupil, Moshe Held.
Albright asserts that Prov. 8–9 is full of Canaanite words and expressions, including the
description of the origin of Wisdom in 8:22–31. Thus verse 22 begins with four words which
apparently reflect a Canaanite influence: “El created me (at) the beginning of his dominion.”
Here we have the verb qānâ with the unusual meaning of “create” (a meaning well known
however, in Canaanite), and the noun derek used in a way suggesting the Canaanite drkt meaning
“dominion.” Albright closes with this judgment: “In a nutshell, my opinion with regard to the
provenience and date of Proverbs is that its entire contents is probably pre-Exilic, but that much
of the book was handed down orally until the fifth century B.C., when we know from Elephantine
that Jews were interested in literature of a different kind.”

Proverbs: The Relationship of Chapters 22–24 to the Wisdom of

Amenemope

A hieratic manuscript of the late Egyptian work, The Wisdom of Amenemope (or Amen-em-apt)
was discovered by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1888 and provisionally dated by him as Eighteenth
Dynasty in origin. So dated, of course, there would be no difficulty in supposing that Solomon
was familiar with this Egyptian work and adapted it for his purposes in Prov. 22:17–24:34. But
subsequent study by Erman, Spiegelberg, Griffith, and Lange brought down the date for
Amenemope to 1000 B.C., then Dynasty XXII, and finally Dynasty XXIV, or even the Persian or
Greek period. The majority of critics assumed that the demonstrably close relationship between
the Hebrew and the Egyptian texts was to be explained as only a dependence of the former upon
the latter; that is to say, while the Hebrews might borrow from Egyptian lore, the Egyptians
would never borrow from Palestine. By this reasoning, then, these chapters in Proverbs must
stem from the Persian or even the Greek period. Although the majority of Liberal scholars are
still of this opinion, a close examination of the linguistic data indicates quite conclusively that
the borrowing must have been the other way around in this particular case. In 1930, R. O. Kevin
(following the lead of Oesterley in his Commentary on Proverbs, 1929) adduced the following
considerations:
1. There are proportionately far more Semitisms in Amenemope’s Egyptian text than in any
other Egyptian work on morality; at least nineteen of these Semitisms are indisputable and
sixteen more are highly probable.
2. Numerous cases of Egyptian words garbled or otherwise unknown can be successfully
explained as textual corruptions from an earlier text which translated the Hebrew terms
employed in the corresponding passage in Proverbs.
3. There are several instances where the Egyptian translator has misunderstood the
corresponding Hebrew word; thus the word t-ḥ-š-w-k (“hold back from or rescue”) in Prov.
24:11 has been rendered in Amenemope XI. 7 as if it were t-ḥ-š-y-k, meaning “to hide” (hence
the Egyptian ḥ˒pw, “to hide”). Or again, the Hebrew šā˓ar (“to think” or “to reckon”) in
Amenemope XIII. 1. 2 has been misunderstood as the Hebrew š-˓-r (šā˓ar) or “storm” (the
Egyptian sn˓) in a nonsensical connection, even though the Hebrew original is perfectly clear and
coherent in its own context. Or else the Egyptian author has grappled with the difficulty of an
obscure Hebrew phase by resorting to a banal paraphrase. For example, Prov. 23:4 says, “Do not
toil to acquire wealth, cease from thine own wisdom”; this comes out in Amenemope IX. 14–15:
“Do not strain to seek an excess when thy needs are safe for thee.” In other words, the un-
Egyptian sentiment “from thy wisdom desist” has been altered to “when thy needs are safe for
thee,” or “when your property is intact,” as Kevin renders it. The important thing is to observe
that while satisfactory reconstructions of the Egyptian can be made on the basis of the Hebrew
original, it is never possible to reconstruct the Hebrew text on the basis of the Egyptian original.
4. It should also be noted that the word š-l-š-w-m in Prov. 22:20, which probably means
“adjutant” (third man in the chariot), has been misinterpreted as the more common word š-l-š-y-
m which means “thirty.” So construed, this would be a statement that thirty proverbs are included
in this section (Prov. 22:17–23:12), although there are actually only twenty-seven separate units
that can be made out in this section. Quite evidently Amenemope interpreted the word as “thirty,”
saying in XXVII. 7, “Behold these thirty chapters,” and therefore was careful to come out with
that number of proverbs. (Note that the Hebrew text of Prov. 22:20 yields the meaning, “Have I
not written to thee excellent things in counsels of knowledge?”—the word excellent being
vocalized as šālɩ̂ šɩ̂ m. The consonantal text, as indicated above, ends the word in w-m. Many
modern scholars follow Amenemope’s amendment and construe the word as “thirty.” Among
these are Erman, Eissfeldt, and the RSV:—“Have I not written for you thirty sayings of
admonition and knowledge?”) Perhaps it should be added that only one-third of the material in
Proverbs 22–24 shows any relationship to the text of Amenemope; the latter seems to have drawn
much of his material from non-Hebrew sources (although Kevin sees traces of Ps. 1 also).

35
Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon

Ecclesiastes

THE HEBREW TITLE for this book is Qōhelet, which apparently meant the preacher’s office,
and then became a term for the preacher himself. It is derived from the root qāhal, meaning “to
convoke an assembly,” hence, “to address an assembly.” The author of this work so refers to
himself in numerous passages, and therefore this is a fitting designation. The Greek term
ecclēsiastēs is a good translation of this term, for it too means “preacher” and is derived from
ekklēsia, meaning “assembly.”

Purpose and Theme of Ecclesiastes

The purpose of Ecclesiastes was to convince men of the uselessness of any world view which
does not rise above the horizon of man himself. It pronounces the verdict of “vanity of vanities”
upon any philosophy of life which regards the created world or human enjoyment as an end in
itself. To view personal happiness as the highest good in life is sheer folly in view of the
preeminent value of God Himself as over against His created universe. Nor can happiness ever
be attained by pursuing after it, since such a pursuit involves the foolishness of self-deification.
Having shown the vanity of living for worldly goals, the author clears the way for a truly
adequate world view which recognizes God Himself as the highest value of all, and the
meaningful life as the one which is lived in His service. Only as a vehicle for the expression of
divine wisdom, goodness, and truth, does the world itself possess any real significance. It is only
God’s work that endures, and only He can impart abiding value to the life and activity of man. “I
know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken
from it” (Eccl. 3:14).

Outline of Ecclesiastes

I. First discourse: the vanity of human wisdom, 1:1–2:26

A. Basic theme: vanity of all merely human effort and experience, 1:1–3
B. Demonstration of the theme, 1:4–2:26
1. Meaningless cycle of human life and history, 1:4–11
2. Ultimate uselessness of human wisdom and philosophy, 1:12–18
3. Emptiness of the enjoyments of pleasure and wealth, 2:1–11
4. Ultimate death of even the wise, 2:12–17
5. Futility of leaving fruits of hard work to undeserving heirs, 2:18–23
6. Necessity of contentment with God’s providences, 2:24–26
II. Second discourse: coming to terms with the laws which govern life, 3:1–5:20
A. The prudent attitude in view of the facts of life and death, 3:1–22
1. A proper time must be recognized for each activity and experience, 3:1–9
2. God is the only guarantor of abiding values, 3:10–15
3. God will punish the unrighteous, visiting death upon all, 3:16–18
4. Man must share physical death with animals, 3:19–20
5. Unsure of the life beyond, man must make the best of this present life, 3:21–22
B. The disappointments of earthly life, 4:1–16
1. Cruelty and misery make life a dubious blessing, 4:1–3
2. Disadvantages are cited for materialistic success, laziness, and insatiable covetousness,
4:4–8
3. Life’s trials are better faced by partners than alone, 4:9–12
4. Political success is temporary and unstable, 4:13–16
C. Futility of the self-seeking life, 5:1–20
1. Presenting to God false sacrifices, vain words, unkept promises is folly, 5:1–7
2. Retribution overtakes oppressors and disappointment is in store for the covetous, 5:8–
17
3. Thankful enjoyment of God’s gifts brings contentment, 5:18–20
III. Third discourse: no satisfaction in earthly goods and treasures, 6:1–8:17
 A. Inadequacy of attainments esteemed by the world, 6:1–12
1. Neither wealth nor large family can bring final satisfaction to the soul, 6:1–6
2. Neither the wise nor the foolish attain satisfaction in their heart, 6:7–9
3. Apart from God, man cannot even discern the real reason for life, 6:10–12
B. Counsels of prudence in this sin-corrupted world, 7:1–29
1. True values are best gauged from the perspective of sorrow and death, 7:1–4
2. Cheap gaiety, dishonest gain, and shortness of temper are but pitfalls, 7:5–9
3. Wisdom is a greater asset than financial wealth in coping with life, 7:10–12
4. God is the author of both good fortune and ill, 7:13–14
5. Both self-righteousness and immorality lead to disaster, 7:15–18
6. Wisdom has surpassing power, but sin is universal, 7:19–20
7. Be heedless of base malice toward yourself, 7:21–22
8. Man’s quest for wisdom cannot by itself attain profound spiritual truth, 7:23–25
9. A wicked woman is the worst of evils a man can encounter, 7:26
10. But all human beings, male and female have fallen from original goodness, 7:27–29
C. Coming to terms with an imperfect world, 8:1–17
1. The wise man reverences the authority of the government, 8:1–5
2. Divine law operates in our life despite woes and wrongs and inevitable death, 8:6–9
3. Though esteemed and unpunished, the wicked will finally be judged by God, 8:10–13
4. Injustices in this life falsely encourage a shallow hedonism, 8:14–15
5. But God’s ways are inscrutable to human wisdom, 8:16–17
IV. Fourth discourse: God will deal with the injustices of this life, 9:1–12:8
A. Death inevitable to all; make the best use of this life, 9:1–18
1. Death is inevitable to both the good and the evil: moral insanity grips them all, 9:1–3
2. Moral choice and the knowledge of this life are cut off at death, 9:4–6
3. Let the godly use to the full life’s opportunities and blessings, 9:7–10
4. Even to the worthy, success is uncertain and life span unpredictable, 9:11–12
5. Wisdom, though unappreciated, succeeds much better than force, 9:13–18
B. The uncertainties of life and the baneful effects of folly, 10:1–20
1. Even a little folly can ruin a man’s life; be prudent before princes, 10:1–4
2. Life provides reversals in fortune and strokes of retribution, 10:5–11
3. A fool is marked by his empty talk and misdirected effort, 10:12–15
4. The welfare of nations and men depends on accepting responsibility, 10:16–19
5. Contempt of authority brings sure retribution, 10:20
C. How best to invest a life, 11:1–12:8
1. Kindness returns with blessings to the benefactor, 11:1–2
2. Man’s wisdom cannot change or fathom God’s laws of nature, 11:3–5
3. The wisest course is lifelong diligence and cheerful industry, 11:6–8
4. A youth misspent in pleasure brings later retribution, 11:9–10
5. Start living for God while young, before afflictions and senility come upon you, 12:1–
8
V. Conclusion: life in the light of eternity, 12:9–14
A. Solomon’s purpose was to teach his people wisely about life, 12:9–10
B. These trenchant admonitions are of more practical value than all literature, 12:11–12
C. Put God’s will first, for His judgment is final, 12:13–14
 Authorship and Date of Composition of Ecclesiastes

The author of this work identifies himself as the son of David, king in Jerusalem. While he does
not specify that his name is Solomon, it is fair to assume that the direct successor of David is
meant rather than some later descendant. This assumption is confirmed by numerous internal
evidences, such as the references to his unrivaled wisdom (1:16), his unequaled wealth (2:8), his
large retinue of servants (2:7), his opportunities for carnal pleasure (2:3), and his extensive
building activities (2:4–6). No other descendant of David measures up to these specifications but
Solomon himself. It has therefore been the traditional view, accepted by Jewish and Christian
scholars alike, that Solomon, the son of David, wrote the book in its entirety. The Jewish
tradition in Baba Bathra 15a to the effect that “Hezekiah and his company wrote Ecclesiastes”
probably means no more than that Hezekiah and his company simply edited and published the
text for public use (cf. Young, IOT, p. 369). Elsewhere Jewish tradition is quite explicit that
Solomon was the author (cf. Megilla 7a and Shabbath 30). Until the rise of nineteenth-century
criticism, it was generally accepted by both the synagogue and the Church that this book was a
genuine work of Solomon’s.
In more recent times, however, there are some Conservative critics who join with Liberal
scholars in regarding this work as post-exilic. They understand the figure of Solomon as intended
to be a mere artistic device designed to present more effectively the message of the unknown late
author. Since Solomon was known to have experienced the satisfaction of every human ambition
and had drunk to the full every possibility of earthly pleasure, he would serve as an admirable
test case in evaluating hedonistic enjoyment and intellectual achievement as over against a life
entirely devoted to God. Among the Conservatives who have adopted this view of the book are
Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, W. J. Beecher (in ISBE), Zoeckler in the Lange Commentary,
Steinmueller, Raven, E. J. Young, and H. C. Leupold. Davis’s Dictionary of the Bible is
noncommittal. In the New Bible Commentary of Davidson, Stibbs, and Kevan, Solomonic
authorship is not even discussed as a serious option. There is, however, a significant number of
modern Conservative scholars who still uphold Solomonic authorship, at least in a modified
form. For the late nineteenth century, we may include A. R. Fausset in the Jamieson, Fausset,
and Brown Commentary; W. T. Bullock in The Speaker’s Commentary; Wilhelm Moeller
(Einleitung in das Alte Testament, p. 210); Dean Milman (History of the Jews, 1881); and A.
Cohen (The Five Megilloth, p. 106). In the twentieth century, we may add the names of L.
Wogue and M. F. Unger. Among the Catholic scholars favoring Solomonic authorship are
Gietmann (whose article in the Catholic Encyclopedia [5:244–248] is very helpful), Schumacher,
Vigoroux, and Cornely-Hagen.
The most significant evidence advanced in demonstration of the late date of composition of
Ecclesiastes is said to be derived from the linguistic data of the text itself. It is undeniably true
that the language of this work is markedly different from that of the other tenth-century Hebrew
texts which have been preserved in the Bible. For that matter, it is different from all the other
books in the Old Testament of whatever age, with the partial exception of the Song of Solomon.
In support of the fifth-century date, Franz Delitzsch listed no less than ninety-six words, forms,
and expressions found nowhere else in the Bible except in exilic and post-exilic works like Ezra,
Esther, Nehemiah, Chronicles, Malachi—or else in the Mishnah. He describes many of these as
Aramaisms largely on the ground of demonstrable noun endings in -ût, -ôn or -ān. Hengstenberg,
however, acknowledged only ten demonstrable Aramaisms in the book; at the other extreme is
the claim of Zoeckler that Aramaisms were to be found in almost every verse. The most
frequently cited Aramaic or late Hebrew terms are pardēs, “park” (found also in Nehemiah and
Song of Solomon); shālaṭ “to rule” (found only in post-exilic books); tāqan, “be straight” (found
only in Daniel and the Talmud); zemān, “definite time” (found only in Nehemiah and Esther);
pithgām, “official decision” (only in Esther and the Aramaic of Daniel); medɩ̂ nâ, in the sense of
“province” (a word found in 1 Kings, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ezekiel, and Lamentations); and
kāshēr, “be correct” (found otherwise only in Esther). The obvious inference is that Ecclesiastes
comes from a time when the Jews made very large use of Aramaic, which presumably was not
the case until after the Exile.
Apart from vocabulary, it is argued that there are evidences of grammatical structure which place
the book at a late date. For example, the independent pronoun (especially hû˒, hɩ̂ ˒, and hēm) is
used as a copular verb with a greater frequency than in the pre-exilic books. Again it is argued
that the imperfect conversive is rare in Ecclesiastes, since it is generally replaced by waw-
connective plus the perfect. Since the latter construction is the prevailing one in the Talmud, its
frequency in Ecclesiastes is thought to be evidence of a late date. In answer to this, however, it
should be pointed out that waw-connective plus the perfect occurs only five times in Daniel
(which according to the critics is mid-second century B.C.) and only five times in the extant
Hebrew text of Ecclesiasticus, dating from about 180 B.C.). If this construction is a sign of
lateness, Ecclesiastes must be later than the second century B.C., since the works from that period
do not yet use it with any frequency.
This latter possibility is, however, completely ruled out by the discovery of four fragments of
Ecclesiastes in the Fourth Qumran Cave, dated on paleographic grounds from the middle of the
second century B.C. As Muilenberg remarks in BASOR, no. 135: “This gives the coup de grace
to earlier views such as those of Graetz, Renan, Leimdorfer, Konig, and others, and makes
unlikely a dating in the second century.” R. H. Pfeiffer back in 1941 (IOT, p. 731) suggested that
the period 170–160 B.C. was most in harmony with the characteristics of the thought and
language of Ecclesiastes. But in the light of this Qumran evidence, one can only conclude that
here again is an example of demonstrable fallacy in the higher critical method practiced by
rationalists of Pfeiffer’s persuasion.
In the above mentioned article, Muilenberg goes on to remark: “Linguistically the book is
unique. There is no question that its language has many striking peculiarities; these have been
explained by some to be late Hebrew (discussed by Margoliouth and Gordis) for which the
language of the Mishnah is said to offer more than adequate support (a contention effectively
answered by Margoliouth in the Jewish Encyclopedia V, 33, where he points out the linguistic
affinities of Qohelet with the Phoenician inscriptions, e.g., Eshmunazar, Tabnith). The Aramaic
cast of the language has long been recognized, but only within recent years has its Aramaic
provenance been claimed and supported in any detail (E Zimmermann, C. C. Torrey, H. L.
Ginsburg).… Dahood has written on Canaanite-Phoenician influences in Qohelet, defending the
thesis that the book of Ecclesiastes was originally composed by an author who wrote in Hebrew
but was influenced by Phoenician spelling, grammar and vocabulary, and who shows heavy
Canaanite-Phoenician literary influence (Biblica 33, 1952, pp. 35–52, 191–221).” At this point it
should be noted that neither a Phoenician background nor an Aramaic background would
necessarily preclude Solomonic authorship, inasmuch as the political and commercial ties with
both the Phoenician-speaking and the Aramaean peoples of the Syrian areas during Solomon’s
reign were closer than any other period in Israel’s history (with the possible exception of of Ahab
in the ninth century or possibly the time of Jeroboam II and his successors in the eighth century).
In weighing the force of the linguistic argument, it should be carefully observed that a
comprehensive survey of all the data, including vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and style,
yields the result that the text of Ecclesiastes fits into no known period in the history of the
Hebrew language. No significant affinities may be traced between this work and any of those
canonical books which rationalist higher criticism has assigned to the Greek period (such as
Daniel, Zechariah II, and portions of “Deutero-Isaiah”). So far as the early post-exilic period is
concerned, the Hebrew of Ecclesiastes is quite as dissimilar to that of Malachi, Nehemiah, and
Esther as to any of the pre-exilic books. This raises an insuperable difficulty for the theory of
Delitzsch and Young, who date it around 430 B.C., and of Beecher in ISBE, who makes it 400. If
Ecclesiastes came from the same period, how could there be such a total lack of similarity in
vocabulary, syntax, and style? Nor can the linguistic problem be solved by moving the date up
into the late intertestamental period. We have already seen that Qohelet fragments from the
Fourth Qumran Cave make a date any later than 150 B.C. absolutely impossible and furnish the
strong probability of the third century or earlier as the time of composition. There are absolutely
no affinities between the vocabulary or style of Ecclesiastes and that of the sectarian literature of
the Qumran community. Older authors like Kenyon (BAM, pp. 94–95) spoke in generalities of
the so-called rabbinical element discoverable in this text. But an actual comparison with the
Hebrew of the Talmud and Midrash shows fully as great a dissimilarity to Ecclesiastes as to any
other book in the Old Testament canon.
It is true that the relative pronoun še occurs frequently throughout Qohelet (sixty-eight times)
alongside the more usual ˓šer (which occurs eighty-nine times). Although še appears several
times in Judges, quite frequently in the later psalms, and occasionally in Lamentations, Ezekiel,
Job, and Joshua, the fact remains that in Ecclesiastes this is the relative pronoun used in sixty-
eight instances out of one hundred fifty-seven. Yet it is noteworthy that this is the characteristic
relative for the Song of Solomon also (i.e., in thirty-two instances out of thirty-three)—a fact
which furnishes greatest embarrassment to those who, like Delitzsch and Young, place Canticles
back in the tenth century and Ecclesiastes in the fifth. If in this stylistic peculiarity there is such a
close resemblance between the two, it is only reasonable to attribute them to the same period, if
not indeed to the same author. Hence, if the Song of Solomon is tenth century and composed by
Solomon, it is hard to resist the conclusion that Ecclesiastes is of the same period and origin.
If it is true that the language and style of Ecclesiastes do not correspond to any literature known
to us from any stage of Hebrew history, but present radical contrasts to every other book in the
Old Testament canon (with the possible exception of Canticles) and to all extant intertestamental
Hebrew literature, then it follows that there is at present no sure foundation for dating this book
upon linguistic grounds (although it is no more dissimilar to tenth-century Hebrew than it is to
fifth century or second century). What then shall we say of this peculiarity?
It seems fairly obvious that we are dealing here with a conventional style peculiar to the
particular genre to which Ecclesiastes belonged. Just as in Akkadian literature, legal codes and
contract tablets present a great contrast to each other in technique and style, and these too in turn
differ greatly from the epistolary or historical prose trom this same period, so also there grew up
in Hebrew culture a conventional language in style which was felt to be peculiarly fitting for
each literary genre. In the case of Greek literature, where we have much more literary data than
we do from Palestine, we find that once a genre developed on a particular soil in a particular
city-state, the dialect and vocabulary type of the original practitioner who exalted this genre to a
classical status would then prevail throughout the rest of the history of Greek literature (until the
triumph of Koinē in the Greek or Roman period). For example, since Homer was the first to
develop the epic, from his time on, all epic poetry had to be written in the Old Ionic dialect
which he had used, even though the more modern poet spoke a quite different dialect, such as
Attic, Doric, or Aeolic. Correspondingly, since the Dorians were the first to develop choral
poetry, convention demanded that whenever an Attic-speaking tragedian (like Sophocles or
Aeschylus) moved into a choral passage in his play, the actors abruptly shifted from Attic Greek
to Doric Greek (or at least a Doricizing type of Attic) with particular cliches and turns of
expression conventional for that particular genre. It so happens that in the case of the precise
genre to which Ecclesiastes belongs, we have nothing else which has survived from Hebrew
literature. Otherwise we would doubtless find abundant parallels for all the peculiar phenomena
of Qohelet in the compositions which belong to the same genre. If this type of philosophical
discourse was first practiced in North Israel before Solomon’s time, this would explain the
Aramaic and Phoenician traits and influences of which modern critics have made so much. It
would also explain the infrequency of the name Yahweh in this text.
In this connection it may be well to mention the theory of L. Wogue, that we have in our present
text of Ecclesiastes a modernized recension. That is to say, the original version of this work as
composed by Solomon was written in an older Hebrew which eventually became too obscure for
ready comprehension by post-exilic generations of Jews. For this reason, says the theory, it was
published anew in a more up-to-date vocabulary and style that it might be more widely enjoyed.
To take an analogy, most English readers read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in a modernized
version, since Chaucer’s fourteenth-century English contains so many obsolete terms and
expressions as to require a glossary for intelligibility. The weakness of this theory, however,
derives from the incorrect assumption that the Hebrew of Ecclesiastes can be clearly identified as
a post-exilic product. Since in point of fact it resembles no known document from the post-exilic
period, there does not seem to be much point to this suggestion. Moreover the Hebrew text itself
is so difficult to understand that it would hardly serve as a popularization intended for ready
comprehension.
Apart from linguistic considerations, the objection is often raised to the Solomonic authorship of
Qohelet that the author seems to speak, occasionally at least, from the standpoint of a third party
or observer, rather than as the king himself. He may even be said to cherish a critical attitude
toward kings, which would scarcely be compatible with the viewpoint of the historic Solomon.
As an oppressive exactor of taxes whose kingdom upon his decease fell apart over the issue of
excessive taxation, it would be out of character for him to say: “Blessed art thou, O land, when
thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for
drunkenness” (10:17); or again: “Curse not the king, no not in thy thought” (10:20, which critics
understand to imply that the king is so objectionable that his subjects are strongly tempted to
curse him); and again: “Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will
not be admonished” (4:13).
To this it may be replied that none of these passages is really decisive against royal authorship.
Solomon was composing a discourse upon government in general from the standpoint of a
philosopher and not as a progovernment propagandist. It would be naive to suppose that he could
have been ignorant of the existence of gluttonous, bibulous, cantankerous, or stubborn-minded
kings, or of the unhappy consequences incurred by their subjects in having such men rule over
them. Ecclesiastes 10:17 may even be interpreted as a bit of self-congratulation on the part of the
royal author; 10:20 may simply have been an admonition to malcontents to show a proper
respect for the government; 4:13 may have been meant as a wholesome reminder to himself. But
at any rate, the whole composition is written from the standpoint of a philosophical observer of
political and social life rather than as a partisan of royalty. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
furnishes a good parallel to Qohelet in this respect, for the Roman emperor wrote this work from
the standpoint of a philosopher rather than as a propagandist for his own government.
Many modern critics such as R. H. Pfeiffer allege that Ecclesiastes betrays the influence of
Greek philosophy. The skeptical attitude toward Judaism, the occasional expressions of
eudaemonism or Epicureanism, the notion of time as cosmic flow, and the attempt to understand
the world as a whole—all these are thought to be of Hellenic origin (so E C. Grant in
Encyclopaedia Americana; likewise Cornill). But G. A. Barton has shown that the asserted
resemblances between Ecclesiastes and the Stoics are merely superficial, and their two
viewpoints are in fundamental opposition. Moreover the indeterminism of Epicureanism
contrasts sharply with the rigid, deterministic thought of Qohelet. But the often cited
commendations of the general enjoyment of eating and drinking were a commonplace found as
early as in the Gilgamesh Epic. In this latter connection, Oswald Loretz (Qohelet und der alte
Orient, Herder, 1964) points to a specific parallel, where Gilgamesh says to Enkidu: “Mankind,
its days are counted; all that it can do is of wind.” R. Gordis is disposed to concede some Greek
influence, but he insists, “Efforts to prove Ecclesiastes an Aristotelian, a Stoic, an Epicurean, a
Cynic, or a Cyrenaic have not been successful. The alleged Grecisms in style have also shown it
to be authentically Hebrew or Semitic.” Pedersen shows that the estimates of mankind in Greek
philosophy are entirely different from those in Ecclesiastes. Galling demonstrates that the
supposed dependence upon Greek gnomists is only a superficial resemblance. Dornseiff points
out the possibility that some Greek apothegms may themselves be of oriental extraction and
imported into Greek thought (cf. W. Baumgartner, “The Wisdom Literature” in OTMS, p. 226).
Attempts have been made to show a post-Solomonic authorship by various telltale anachronisms.
Thus in 1:16 the preacher speaks of having attained “more wisdom than all they that have been
before me in Jerusalem.” This is construed by critics to mean, more than all kings who were
before him, which would of course be a rather strange statement for one who was preceded by
only one Israelite king in Jerusalem, namely David. It is interesting to observe that while E. J.
Young feels the force of this argument in the case of Ecclesiastes, he resorts to an alternative
explanation in an exactly similar situation at 1 Kings 14:9. In this latter passage a denunciatory
prophet from Judah rebukes Jeroboam I, comparing him “with all that were before thee.” Rather
than conceding this to be an anachronism, Young comments, “Those who preceded him were
probably elders and judges” (IOT, p. 189). In a similar way we can confidently assert that there
were many more kings before Solomon in Jerusalem than just his father David. Jerusalem had
been a royal city for pre-Hebrew inhabitants many hundreds of years, even back to the time of
Melchizedek, Abraham’s contemporary.
Yet there is another explanation of the phrase in 1:16. The text does not specify all kings, but
only all. In the context it is fair to say that the author implies “all wise men who were before me
in Jerusalem.” The statement in 1 Kings 4:31 concerning Solomon’s superiority draws the
comparison with Heman, Chalcol, and Darda, who may very well have been sages in pre-
Davidic Jerusalem. Melchizedek himself certainly would have rated highly as a wise man, in
view of his encounter with Abraham in Gen. 14.
Another supposed anachronism is found in Eccl. 1:12: “I … was [hāyɩ̂ tɩ̂ ] king … in Jerusalem.”
This perfect tense is thought to betray the fact that Solomon was already a figure of the past,
possibly of the remote past, by the time this composition was written. It is urged that this one
word would suffice for the Hebrew reader to show him that Solomonic authorship was only
intended to be fictional. To this it may be answered that the form in question may more properly
be rendered: “I became king over Israel.” This would be a very natural statement for Solomon to
make in his old age as he looked back on the important turning points in his life’s career. It is
difficult to imagine what other verb form would have been more appropriate in this connection;
the imperfect ˓ehyeh might have been construed by the reader to mean either “I was being king,”
or “I am king,” or “I will be king.” Torczyner and Galling have pointed to Egyptian parallels in
which “I was king” occurs as the statement made by a dying king as he composes his final
testament for a funerary inscription (cf. OTMS, p. 222).
It is interesting in this connection to point to the similar use of this same verb in Jonah 3:3: “Now
Nineveh was [hāyetâ] a great city,” which Young explains as follows: “Furthermore, 3:3 does not
describe Nineveh as a city that had existed long ago in the past, but simply indicates the
condition or size as Jonah found it” (IOT, p. 279). In the light of this clear and appropriate
explanation, it is strange that the same author (E. J. Young) should insist that the clear
implication of hāyɩ̂ tɩ̂ in Eccl. 1:12 “is that the writer had been and no longer is king” (IOT, p.
368). On the contrary, it is altogether natural for a man in his old age to make reference to the
commencement of his career by the use of this perfect tense in Hebrew.
Last, it is contended by advocates of a late date that the contemporary age implied by the text of
Ecclesiastes is one of misfortune, misery, and oppression, rather than of the unexampled
prosperity which characterized the reign of Solomon (cf. 1 Kings 4:25). For example, we meet
verses like these: Ecclesiastes 4:3: “Better is he … [that] hath not yet been, who hath not seen the
evil work that is done under the sun,” and 7:10: “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former
days were better than these?” To this it may be replied that a proper interpretation of these verses
can only be made in the light of the context. Thus 4:3 occurs in a passage which describes
oppression and hardship as vicissitudes entering into human experience generally, despite
intervals of comparative prosperity and security such as Israel passed through in the tenth
century. Solomon would not have been unmindful of the fact that the experience both of nations
and of individuals normally includes times of hardship and testing which challenge an optimistic
concept of life. Surely with his vast knowledge of history and world affairs, as well as of the dark
era of Saul’s reign in Israel, Solomon would have been aware of the bitter aspects of human life.
He certainly had the wit to realize that much evil was carried on “under the sun” even in his own
kingdom and during his own reign. As for 7:10, it should be pointed out that the “better days”
spoken of may well have had reference to the life of an individual complainer who had fallen
upon some personal misfortune. There is nothing whatever in the context to imply that he was
talking about the current situation of his country as a whole.
In view of the foregoing discussion, it is fair to assert that the so-called anachronisms are all
capable of an interpretation reconcilable with Solomonic authorship. We have already seen that
the linguistic data do not permit any certainty in dating, whether early or late, and that the most
plausible explanation is that Ecclesiastes is written in a particular style conventional for its own
genre.
Perhaps it should be added that words of so-called Persian origin, like pardēs (“park”) and
pitgām (“official decision”) are also derivable from Sanskrit (paridhis and pratigāma,
respectively), a language of ancient India closely related to Persian. Although there is no explicit
record in Scripture that Solomon’s merchant marine operating from the port of Elath on the Red
Sea made voyages to India, there is every likelihood that they did so in quest of choice spices
and fabrics. There exists, therefore, the possibility that these words might have found their way
into currency at an era when Israelite commercial relations were more extensive than at any other
time in history. In other words, it is fair to say that until we discover more Hebrew literature of
the same genre and from the age of Solomon himself, we simply do not know enough to assert
positively that Solomon could not have been the author of the book. Inasmuch as the plain
implication of the text is that he was indeed the composer and left this work as a final testament
to his people, on the basis of his own life’s experience, it seems best to hold to the traditional
view of the synagogue and the church that this work is an authentic production of his pen. This
view is strengthened by the fact that there are some remarkable similarities between such
passages in Ecclesiastes as 10:8, 9, 12, 13, 18 and the corresponding sections in Proverbs.
A word should be said concerning the so-called pessimism of Ecclesiastes with regard to the life
to come. There are, for instance, frequent reminders of the inevitability of death for all creatures,
man, and beast (3:19)—although it is recognized that the spirit of man “goes upward” and the
spirit of the beast “goes downward to the earth” (3:21). The worthwhileness of life seems to be
questioned by such passages as 4:2: “Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more
than the living which are yet alive.” But this statement has to be construed in context. The
previous verse makes it clear that if life is going to consist in oppression, calamity, and sorrow,
then it is better never to have been born. In 6:8 the preacher asks, “For what hath the wise more
than the fool? What hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living?” This comment is to
be understood in the light of the basic purpose of the book, which is to demonstrate that apart
from God and His holy will, life lacks any ultimate meaning, and amounts to no more than
vanity. This is true of the life of the well-educated, the rich, and the healthy, as well as that of the
less fortunate members of the human race. But when a man’s relationship to the Lord is right, it
will be well with him (8:12). Apart from the fear of God and a dedicated purpose to do His will,
even the most favored of men lead a wretched and depraved existence. Hence, “This is an evil
among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart
of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they
go to the dead” (9:3).
Great stress, however, is laid upon the importance of this life as the only arena of opportunity
and significant accomplishment available to man before he steps out into eternity. Hence, “For to
him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion” (9:4).
From 9:5 some have mistakenly derived a teaching of soul sleep for the dead: “For the living
know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward;
for the memory of them is forgotten.” But taken in context, this verse simply means that the dead
have no more knowledge of a personal future with its opportunities of choice for or against God,
and between life and good, and death and evil, such as they had prior to the grave. Nor do they
have any more knowledge of what goes on under the sun, that is upon earth, while they await in
Sheol the day of judgment. At this stage of revelation back in Solomon’s time, it was premature
for anything to be revealed about the glories of heaven, since of course they were not yet open to
deceased believers until the resurrection of Christ.
In conclusion, then, those who interpret the position of Ecclesiastes to be skeptical agnosticism
grossly misconstrue the message of this book. They are compelled to classify as later additions
the numerous sentiments of reverent faith and trust in God with which the twelve chapters of
Ecclesiastes abound. In the interests of their theory, they must exclude from the original text the
conclusion of the final chapter: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and
keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13).

Song of Solomon

The Hebrew title of this book is Šɩ̂ r haš-šɩ̄rɩ̂ m, that is, “The Song of the Songs,” or “The Best of
Songs.” The LXX rendered this title literally as asrna asmatōn, and the Vulgate as Canticum
Canticorum, both of which mean the “song of songs.” It is from the Latin title that the term
Canticles is derived as a designation of this book.
The theme of Canticles is the love of Solomon for his Shulamite bride and her deep affection for
him. This love affair is understood to typify the warm, personal relationship which God desires
with His spiritual bride, composed of all redeemed believers who have given their hearts to Him.
From the Christian perspective, this points to the mutual commitment between Christ and His
church and the fullness of fellowship which ought to subsist between them.

Outline of the Song of Solomon

A simple and adequate outline is furnished by Delitzsch, who divides the book into six acts:

I. Mutual affection of the lovers, 1:2–2:7

II. Mutual seeking and finding of the lovers, 2:8–3:5

III. Fetching of the bride, and the marriage, 3:6–5:1

IV. Love scorned but won again, 5:2–6:9

V. The Shulamite as the attractively fair but humble princess, 6:10–8:4

VI. Ratification of the love covenant in her home, 8:5–14

Authorship and Date of Composition of the Song of Solomon

The opening verse of the book attributes authorship to King Solomon, using the formula “which
is of Solomon” (ašer li-Šelomoh). Some scholars have interpreted this phrase as a formula of
dedication rather than a true attribution of authorship (essentially the same issue involved as in
the le-Dāwɩ̂ d of the psalm titles), but it should be understood that this preposition le, “to,” is the
only convenient way of expressing possession or authorship in Hebrew where the same author
may have composed many other works. It has been the uniform tradition of the Christian church
until modern times that Canticles is a genuine Solomonic production. Even in more recent times,
Delitzsch, Raven, Steinmueller, and Young have shown little hesitation is assigning the
authorship of Canticles to Solomon.

SONG OF SOLOMON

THEORIES OF INTERPRETATION

Allegorical Christ and His church

Literal Secular love songs

Typical Historical incident elevating love to a holy

level

This all the more noteworthy because, as we have already pointed out, there is a considerable
similarity in vocabulary and syntax between the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes (the
Solomonic authorship of which all the above named have denied). Liberal scholars have usually
classed these two works together as representing approximately the same period of Hebrew
literature. Certainly this relationship is favored by the standard Hebrew dictionaries, which tend
to group the two together lexically. It is a striking fact that neither of them refers to God as
Yahweh; the Tetragrammaton does not appear in either of them. There is a significant number of
words which occur only in these two books, so far as the Hebrew Scriptures are concerned.
There would seem to be, therefore, a basic inconsistency in denying authenticity to Ecclesiastes
on linguistic grounds and yet affirming it for the Song of Solomon despite linguistic factors.
Liberal scholars uniformly deny Solomonic authorship of Canticles and assign the composition
of the books to a period considerably later than the tenth century B.C. Moderates like W. R.
Smith and S. R. Driver favored a pre-exilic date, that is, before 600 B.C.; Such radicals as
Kuenen, Cornill, Cheyne, Budde, Kautzsch, and Eissfeldt confidently dated it in the post-exilic
or even in the Hellenistic period. W. Baumgartner assigns it to the late third century (cf. OTMS,
p. 223).
It is principally on linguistic grounds that the case for late composition is based. The following
phenomena are most conspicuous:
1. The prevalence of še- instead of ˓šer as the relative pronoun. But as we have seen in the
discussion of Ecclesiastes, the relative še- is not per se a proof of late authorship. A cognate of
the Akkadian relative ša, which is as old as the third millennium, it appears in the song of
Deborah (Judg. 5) and elsewhere in Judges; also in Job 19:29; 2 Kings 6:11; once in Jonah; in
Lamentations, and various psalms. It seems to have been a very acceptable substitute for ˓šer in
Hebrew poetic style. It was probably characteristic of the dialect of northern Israel. The abundant
use of še- in later Hebrew may simply reflect a common use in the vernacular which literary
Hebrew shied away from until the post-exilic period. In the intertestamental age, of course, the
frequent use of the corresponding particle dɩ̂ in Aramaic tended to encourage the Jews, who were
naturally well versed in Aramaic as their colloquial tongue, to employ še- in their Hebrew
compositions.
2. The presence of various Aramaisms like nāṭar (cognate with nāṣar, Hebrew, “guard, watch
over”), berōṯ (cognate with berōš, Hebrew, “cypress”) and setāw (“winter”) is taken to indicate
post-exilic authorship. Yet, as has already been observed in chapter 7 of this work, they may
have been brought into the Hebrew language at an early date, or else they may indicate a North
Israelite coloring. (Note that if the Shulamite came from Shunem, as the LXX transliteration
Sounamitis indicates, then the bride would have come from the territory of the northern tribe of
Issachar.) Significantly enough, even the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon labels berōṯ as North
Palestinian rather than as an Aramaism.
3. It is alleged that the book contains two words derived from Greek, ˒appiryôn (3:9) or
palanquin, from the Greek phoreion, and pardēs (4:13) meaning “orchard,” from either the
Greek paradeisos or the Persian pairideca, meaning “enclosure.” Yet as already pointed out in
connection with Ecclesiastes, such words as these could have come to Solomon from his trade
contacts with India, since the Sanskrit word for palanquin is paryama or the diminutive parynka,
and the Sanskrit for “enclosure” is paridhis (cf. pardɩ̄su, “park, preserve,” late Assyrian).

Song of Solomon: Positive Evidences of Solomonic Authorship

The author shows a noteworthy interest in natural history, corresponding to the historical notices
about Solomon’s encyclopedic knowledge in this field (1 Kings 4:33). Thus the flora mentioned
in Canticles include twenty-one varieties of plant life (such as henna flowers in 1:14, rose of
Sharon, lily of the valley in 2:1, apple trees, pomegranates, saffron, calamus, cinnamon, and
mandrakes). Among the fauna are no less than fifteen species of animals (roes, hinds, harts,
doves, foxes, goats, ewes, etc.). There is also prominent mention of Pharaoh’s cavalry in 1:9,
which accords with the statement in 1 Kings 10:28, where the cavalry appears as an important
item in Solomon’s army as well as in his trade relations. The book shows many evidences of
royal luxury and the abundance of costly imported products, such as spikenard in 1:12; myrrh in
1:13; frankincense in 3:6; palanquins in 3:9; cosmetic powders, silver, gold, purple, ivory, and
beryl.
The geographical references unmistakably favor a date prior to 930 B.C. The author mentions
quite indiscriminately localities to be found in both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms:
Engedi, Hermon, Carmel, Lebanon, Heshbon, and Jerusalem. These are spoken of as if they all
belonged to the same political realm. Note that Tirzah is mentioned as a city of particular glory
and beauty, and that too in the same breath with Jerusalem itself (6:4). If this had been written
after the time when Tirzah was chosen as the earliest capital of the breakaway Northern
Kingdom in rejection of the authority of the dynasty of David, it is scarcely conceivable that it
would have been referred to in such favorable terms. On the other hand, it is highly significant
that Samaria, the city founded by Omri sometime between 885 and 874, is never mentioned in
the Song of Solomon.
Judging from internal evidence, then, the author was totally unaware of any division of the
Hebrew monarchy into North and South. This can only be reconciled with a date of composition
in the tenth century, prior to 931 B.C. Even after the return from exile, no Jew of the province of
Judea would have referred so indiscriminately to prominent localities in the non-Jewish areas of
Palestine which were by this time under Gentile or Samaritan overlordship. It is true that this
whole area was reunited under the rule of the Hasmonean kings, John Hyrcanus and Alexander
Jannaeus, but the evidence of the Qumran fragments from Cave IV indicates that Canticles was
already in written form at least as early as the outbreak of the Maccabean revolt in 168 B.C. It is
interesting to note that even a Liberal scholar like R. Gordis feels warranted in asserting that
Canticles 3:6–11 is “the oldest poem in the whole collection and was composed on the occasion
of one of Solomon’s marriages to a foreign princess.”

Canonicity of the Song of Solomon

It has already been noted in chapter 5 that this book (along with Ecclesiastes) was listed with the
five Antilegomena, not so much on the ground that Solomon did not compose it, but on the
ground that it lacked religious value. The Alexandrian Jew Philo, who quoted so extensively
from the Old Testament, failed to mention Canticles in any of his extant writings. It does not
seem to be referred to in the New Testament. The earliest identifiable reference to it is found in 4
Esdras 5:24–26; 7:26 (a book composed between A.D. 70 and 130), and in Ta’anith 4:8 (a tractate
in the Mishnah), which states that certain portions of Canticles were used in festivals celebrated
in the temple prior to A.D. 70. The question of whether the book had been rightly admitted to the
Hebrew canon was warmly debated by the scholars of Jamnia around A.D. 90, but the tradition of
divine inspiration was successfully upheld by Rabbi Akiba, who used allegorical interpretation to
justify its spiritual value.

Theories of interpretation of the Song of Solomon

1. Allegorical. The allegorical interpretation prevailed from ancient times until the rise of
modern scholarship. It identified Solomon with Jehovah (or else, according to the Christians,
with Christ) and the Shulamite as Israel (or the Church). The historicity of Solomon’s love affair
is of small importance to the exponents of this theory. They tend to interpret each detail in a
symbolic manner; thus Solomon’s eighty concubines, according to some, represent the eighty
heresies destined to plague the Church. Broadly speaking, even the nineteenth-century
conservatives Hengstenberg and Keil tended to favor an allegorical line of interpretation
(without, of course, advocating any fanciful identifications) and pointed to the allegorical
overtones of Ps. 45 and Isa. 51:1–17 (which contains several different allegories) for
justification. There is no question that the marriage relationship was viewed by the prophets as
bearing an analogy to Jehovah’s position toward Israel (cf. Isa. 54:6; 61:10). Correspondingly,
they regarded apostasy as constituting adultery or whoredom (cf Jer. 3:1; Ezek. 16, 23; Hos. 1–
3). Compare in the Torah, Ex. 34:14–16, which refers to idolatry as whoredom; and likewise
Lev. 20:5–6.
It must be admitted that these passages establish at least a typical relationship between human
love and marriage and the covenant relationship between God and His people. Nevertheless, the
allegorical view faces certain difficulties, not the least of which is that the book seems to speak
of a historical episode in Solomon’s life and accords well with Solomon’s situation, at least in
the earlier part of his reign (judging from the comparatively small number of his concubines).
Moreover, the allegorical method if consistently carried out requires a spiritual counterpart for
every physical detail. Certainly it is objectionable to equate Solomon and his enormous harem
with the figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, at least upon an allegorical basis.
2. Literal. This literal theory regards the poem as a secular love song not intended to convey a
spiritual message or theological overtone, but simply a lyric expression of human love on a high
romantic plane. Advocates of this theory, such as E. J. Young and H. H. Rowley, defend the
canonicity of the book on the ground that it implies a divine sanction for the relationship of
marital love as over against the degenerate or polygamous perversions of marriage which were
current in Solomon’s time (cf. Rowley, Servant of the Lord and Other Essays, p. 233; Young,
IOT, p. 354). Young goes on to comment, “The eye of faith, as it beholds this picture of exalted
human love, will be reminded of the one love that is above all earthly and human affections—
even the love of the Son of God for lost humanity” (IOT, p. 355).
Yet it must be admitted that on the supposition that the lover here is Solomon, the husband of
seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3), it is difficult to see how this
poem taken as an expression of mere human love can be said to furnish a very high standard of
marital devotion and affection. At best it can be regarded as the one experience that Solomon
ever enjoyed of pure romance, and yet one which was destined to exert little influence upon his
subsequent conduct. (Franz Delitzsch advocated the view that the Song is a drama in which King
Solomon falls in love with a Shulamite girl, and after taking her to his harem in Jerusalem, is
purified in his affection from a sensual lust to pure love. Zoeckler shared essentially this same
view.)
This literal theory assumes various specialized forms, of which the two most important are the
shepherd hypothesis and the erotic hypothesis. The shepherd hypothesis introduces a new male
figure who is not the same person as the king, but rather is the Shulamite’s fiance back in the
hometown of Shunem (so Jacobi, Umbreit, and Ewald). By dint of arbitrarily assigning the
sentiments of warm affection to the shepherd and the more stiff and formal speeches to the king,
a distinction may be made out, even though it results in very unnatural parceling up of the
dialogue. Thus in chapter 4 verses 1–7 are assigned to Solomon, and verses 8–15 to the
shepherd, even though there is absolutely nothing in the text to indicate that the speaker has
changed. Some passages highly inappropriate to a bucolic lover are interpreted as referring to the
shepherd, such as: “My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the
gardens, and to gather lilies” (6:2). It is at least unlikely that Israelite shepherds would have had
the means, the time, or the inclination for such luxuries as spice gardens or the gathering of lilies.
The erotic hypothesis is advocated by such scholars as Budde, Eissfeldt, Pfeiffer, and Dussaud,
who understand Canticles as an anthology of love songs of the so-called wasf type. The wasf or
“description” was a type of song sung by guests at a Syrian wedding feast in which the beauty of
the bride and the excellencies of the wedding couple would be glowingly described. This custom
is practiced in the Near East even in modern times, according to J. G. Wetstein. On the other
hand, there is no literary evidence of the existence of the wasf genre in Hebrew Palestine in any
age (apart from Canticles itself), and the closely connected structure of the whole poem certainly
discourages the theory of its being an anthology of originally independent lyrics.
3. Typical view. In many ways this seems to be the most satisfactory of the theories (though
Young dismisses it with a single deprecatory sentence—IOT, p. 353). This interpretation is
defended by Raven and Unger, who understand the poem as based upon an actual historical
incident in Solomon’s life. In contrast to some of the more glamorous wives of Solomon, such as
Pharaoh’s daughter, the Shulamite was a country girl who possessed a beautiful soul as well as a
fair body. By her radiant sincerity and personal charms she taught Solomon, temporarily at least,
to know the meaning of true, monogamous love—a love for which he gladly exchanged the
corrupt splendor of his court. This song transfigures natural love by elevating it to a holy level.
And yet (in opposition to the literalists) the author intends this couple to stand in a typical
relationship reflecting Jehovah’s love for His people and foreshadowing the mutual affection of
Christ and His Church. According to the typical view, the lines of analogy are found not in all
the subordinate details (as in the allegorical view) but only in the main outlines. Despite his gross
personal failures, King Solomon is represented elsewhere in Scripture (2 Sam. 7:12–17; 23:1–7;
Ps. 72; cf. Matt. 12:42) as a type of Christ as the King of the millennial age sitting upon David’s
throne. Understood in this way, the Song is rich in spiritual overtones which have proved a
comfort and an encouragement to devout students of Scripture throughout the ages of church
history. And yet it requires a really mature soul to appreciate the spiritual beauties which are
latent in this book. Not without justification is the old rabbinical requirement that no Jew should
read the Song of Songs until he had attained the age of thirty.

Appendix 1
Old Testament Chronology

The dates marked with an asterisk are especially important for Old Testament introduction.
Essentially this list follows the chronology of J. B. Payne’s Outline of Hebrew History. Some
minor adjustments may be warranted in the light of more recent discovery, but the dates given
below are at least approximately correct.

EGYPTIAN KINGS PATRIARCHS AND

ISRAELITES
Egyptian Dynasties I and II 3000–2600
(3100–2700, Vos, ABS, p. 222)

*Egyptian Old Kingdom 2600–2250

(Dyn. III–VI)
III–IV 2660–2500 (Pfeiffer & Vos,
 HGBL, p. 68)
Dyn IV 2723–2563 (ZPEB ii, p. 231,
K. A. Kitchen) 2613–2494
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 8;38, ‘59)

First Intermediate 2250–2000 *Birth of Abraham 2166

Period (Dyn. VII–XI)

*Egypt’s dynasty XII 2000–1780 *Jacob’s migration 1876

(Middle Kingdom) to Egypt

Second Intermediate 1780–1546

Period (Dyn. XII–XVII)

Hammurabi (Rowton) 1792–1750

(Finegan) 1728–1686
(Hyksos Period, Dyn. XV–XVI)

*Egyptian New Kingdom 1546–1085

Dynasty XVIII

Ahmose I 1584–1860
Amenhotep I 1560–1539
Thutmose I 1539–1514 *Birth of Moses ca. 1527
Thutmose II 1514–1501
Queen Hatshepsut 1501–1482
*Thutmose III (1501–)1482-
1447 *The Exodus 1446
*Amenhotep II 1447–1421 (Late Date Theory: 1290)

Thutmose IV 1421– *Conquest of Jericho 1406

1410 *Period of the judges 1389–1050
*Amenhotep III 1410–1376

Amenhotep IV 1376–1362
(Akhnaton)
Tutankhamen 1361–1352

Dynasty XIX
UNITED MONARCHY
Horemhab 1349–1319
Seti I 1320–1300 *Saul 1050–1010
*Rameses II 1300–1234 *David 1010–970
Merneptah 1234-1224 *Solomon 970–931
(Vos, p. 210) 1224–1214 *Temple begun ca. 966
 Dynasty XX

Rameses III 1204-1172

Divided Monarchy
KINGS OF JUDAH KINGS OF DAMASCUS KINGS OF ISRAEL

*Rehoboam 931–913 Rezon 940–880 *Jeroboam I 930–910

Abijam 913–910 Ben-Hadad I 880– Nadab 910–909
*Asa 910–869 842 Baasha 909–886
Hazael 842– Elah 886–885
806 Zimri 885
Ben-Hadad II 806–770 Omri 885–874
*Jehoshaphat 872–848 Rezin 750–732 *Ahab 874–853
Jehoram 848–841 Ahaziah 853–852
(coregent already in 853) Jehoram 852–841
PROPHETS
Ahaziah 841 Obadiah ca. 845 *Jehu 841–814
Athaliah 841–835
*Joash 835-796 Jehoahaz 814–798
Amaziah 796–767 Jehoash 798–782
*Uzziah 790–739 Joel 830–810 *Jeroboam II 793–753
Jonah ca. 800 Zechariah 753–752
Amos ca. 760–757 Shallum 752
Menahem 752–742
Jotham 751–736 Pekahiah 742–740
Ahaz 742–728 Pekah (752) 740–732
*Hezekiah 728–697 Hosea 756–725 Hoshea 732–723
*Isaiah 740– Fall of Samaria 721
*Manasseh 697–642 680
*Amon 642–640
*Josiah 640–609 Micah 735–690

Nahum 640 KINGS

Zephaniah 640–630 OF ASSYRIA
*Jeremiah 626–570
Shalmaneser III 858–
824
Adad Nirari III 810–
783
Asshur-Dan 771–
 754
Tiglath-pileser III 744–
727
Shalmaneser V 727–
722
Jehoahaz 609–608 Egyptian Dynasty XXVI Sargon II 722–
705
Psamtik I 663–610 Sennacherib 705–
Neco 610–595 681
Psamtik II 595–589 Essarhaddon 680–
Hophra 669
(Apries) 588–569 Ashurbanipal 669–
Jehoiakim 608–597 Ahmose II 626
Jehoiachin 597 (Amasis) 569–526 Fall of Nineveh 612
Zedekiah 597–587 Psamtik III 526–525
*Fall of Jerusalem 587 Habakkuk 608–597
Gedaliah ca. 586–585 *Ezekiel 592–570
Fourth ca. 583
Deportation

Captivity
KINGS OF CHALDEA

Nebuchadnezzar 605– *Daniel 600–

562 530
(invasion of Egypt) 568/7
Evil-Merodach 561–
560
Nabonidus 555–
530
*Fall of Babylon 539

KINGS OF PERSIA

Cyrus the Great 558–

529 *Second 520–
(defeat of Medes) 550 *Haggai 520– 516
Cabyses 529– 519 temple rebuilt
523 Zechariah 519–
(conquest of Egypt) 475
*Darius I 522–
485 *Ezra’s return 457
*Nehemiah’s return 445
*Xerxes 485– Malachi ca. 435
464 Nehemiah’s second
(Ahashuerus) governorship 433–
Artaxerxes 464– 430
424

Darius II 423–
406
*Artaxerxes II 404–
359

Intertestamental Period
KINGS OF GREECE
*Alexander the Great 336– * Rededication of the temple by Judas
323 Maccabaeus (Hanukkah) Dec. 165
*Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) 175–
164

HASMONAEAN DYNASTY
John Hyrcanus 135–
105
Alexander Jannaeus 104–78

ROMAN RULE
*Pompey’s conquest of Syria Palestine
63

Appendix 2
Anachronisms and Historical Inaccuracies in the Koran

Sura 11—Houd
:42–43. Noah’s (unnamed) son is said to have refused to take refuge in the ark while the flood
waters were rising, and despite his father’s plea, chose rather to flee to a mountaintop, from
which he was swept away by a wave. (Gen. 6–7 indicates that Noah had only three sons, and that
they all entered the ark. Gen. 10 gives the line of descendants from each.)

Sura 12—Joseph, Peace Be on Him

:11–20. Joseph did not go seeking his brother up at Dothan (as Gen. 37 records), but rather the
brothers, having already plotted his death, persuaded Jacob to let him go with them simply for
fun and sport. Having gotten him into their power, they put him down into a well with water in it
(rather than a dry pit). Nor was it they who sold him to the passing merchantmen, but rather a
chance wayfarer who had come to the well to draw water. He sold the boy to the merchants “for
a few dirhams” (rather than the substantial price of twenty shekels of silver, as Gen. 37:28
states).
:21–32. His Egyptian owner’s wife (Potiphar’s name is not given), in her attempt to seduce him,
tore his shirt from behind (rather than from in front) in her pursuit of him—a fact observed by
Potiphar’s canny servant, and which served to expose the falsity of her charge. Later she
admitted to her women friends that this was the case, yet in some unexplained way she managed
to get Joseph into jail all the same.
:36–55. In jail, Joseph tried to convert the two “youths” (i.e., Pharaoh’s butler and baker) to
“Islam” and away from idolatry. Years later, the surviving youth (the butler) remembered
Joseph’s dream-interpreting ability, went to him in jail with a report of the substance of the
king’s dream (rather than the king’s relating it to him directly in the palace), and got an
interpretation from him which he then relayed to Pharaoh. As a result the king placed Joseph in
charge of the nation’s grain supply. (The rest of the story, with disclosure to the ten brothers,
etc., closely follows the account in Gen. 40–45.)

Sura 26—The Poets

:55–60. In Egypt, the Israelites were stated by Pharaoh to be but “a scanty band” (in contrast to
Ex. 1:9). As they are permitted to leave Egypt, they are said to be forsaking “their gardens and
fountains and splendid dwellings.” Apparently they had not been subjected to slavery at all (for
no mention is made of it), but rather had enjoyed wealth and luxury while in Egypt. (This renders
the whole motive for deliverance of God’s covenant people from Egypt rather obscure.)

Sura 2—The Cow

:57, 61. During the Exodus, the Israelites became tired of manna and demanded vegetables from
the soil. After scolding them, Moses said, “Get down to Egypt, for you shall have what you
asked.” They proceeded to do so: “And they returned with wrath from God.” (The record in
Exodus-Numbers makes it clear that while discontented Israelites spoke of returning to Egypt,
none of them actually did so.)
In this connection, it is stated in v. 61: “They disbelieved the signs of God, and slew the Prophets
unjustly; this, for they rebelled and transgressed.” On this passage, see Rodwell’s footnote: “This
passage (cf. 26:59) is one of the numerous anachronisms which abound in the Koran and prove
the gross ignorance of the Arabian prophet” (Koran, trans. J. M. Rodwell, Everyman’s Library
[New York: Dutton, 1909], p. 344).
:249. When King Saul of Israel (called Talut in Sura 2:247) marched forth with his forces, he
said, “God will test you by a river. He who drinks of it shall not be of my band; but he who shall
not taste of it, drinking a drink out of the hand excepted, shall be of my band.” (Rodwell’s
footnote here calls attention to Muhammed’s confusion here between Saul and Gideon. Cf. Judg.
7:5–8.)

Sura 3—The Family of Imran

Rodwell’s introductory note to this Sura points out that Muhammed supposed that Imran (or
Amram) was the father of the Virgin Mary—“Mary” being “Maryam” or Miriam, in Arabic. Cf.
Sura 66:12, “Mary the daughter of Imran,” who remained a Virgin after marriage and
motherhood. He also supposed that Mary and Elizabeth were sisters, and along with Zecharias,
John the Baptist, and Jesus, they made up the family of Imran. It is just possible, as some Muslim
authors assert, that Muhammed thought that Miriam’s soul and body were miraculously
preserved until the time of Jesus (1400 years!), in order that she might become His mother,
Mary. This he may have gotten from the Talmudists, who fabled that the Angel of Death and the
worm of corruption had no power over the body of Miriam (cf. Babba Bathra 17, and Josephus,
Antiquities, 4.4.6). Another source for this account may have been the Protevangelium of James,
iv, which states: “And Anna said, ‘As the Lord my God lives, he shall be a minister to Him all
his days,’ ” referring to the future career of her offspring. Thus the wife of Imran says here (Sura
3:31): “O my Lord, I vow to Thee what is in my womb, for Thy special service; accept it from
me, for Thou hearest, knowest!”
:41. Zacharias said to the angel, “Lord, give me a token.” He said, “Thy token shall be that for
three days thou shalt speak to no man but by signs.” (Luke 1:18–20 makes it clear that he was to
remain speechless until the promised child should be born, or about nine or ten months.)
:55. “Remember when God said, ‘O Jesus, verily I will cause thee to die’ [or, this mutawwafika
may also be rendered: “take thee unto Myself”], and “Will take thee up to Myself, and deliver
thee from those who believe not.” (Rodwell’s footnote here: “Muhammed apparently believed
that God took the dead body of Jesus to heaven—for three hours, according to some—while the
Jews crucified a man who resembled him. Cf. Sura 4:156; Sura 19:34. Muhammed supposed
Jesus to have died a natural death, though it is nowhere stated how long He remained in this
state.”)
 Sura 61—Battle Array

:6. “And remember when Jesus the son of Mary said, ‘O children of Israel, of a truth I am God’s
apostle to you to confirm the law which was given before me, and to announce an apostle that
shall come after me whose name shall be Ahmad.’ ” (Rodwell notes: “This apparently
Muhammed got from the title Parakletos which Jesus assigned to the Holy Spirit in John 16:7 et
al., which Muhammed confused with perikytos (“famous, praised”), for which the Arabic would
be Ahmad or Muhammad.”)

Sura 5—The Table

:119. “And when God shall say, ‘O Jesus, son of Mary, hast thou said to mankind, “Take me and
my mother as two Gods beside God,” ’ he shall say, ‘Glory be to Thee! It is not for me to say
that which I know to be not the truth. Had I said that, verily Thou wouldst have known it; Thou
knowest what is in me.’ ” (This involves a complete misunderstanding of the Trinity, with Mary
as a third person, rather than the Holy Spirit. It also implies that Jesus denied He was the Son of
God; cf. Mark 14:61–62 and related passages.)

Sura 21—The Prophets

:68–69 claims that Nimrod threw Abraham into the fire in an act of bitter hostility. But according
to the Torah, Gen. 10:8–11 tells us that Nimrod came in the third generation after Noah, whereas
Abraham came ten generations after Noah (Gen. 10:22–25; 11:13–25). Therefore it is highly
unlikely that Nimrod was still alive when Abraham was born to Terah.
One of the most perplexing puzzles in the Koran has to do with the Virgin Mary. In 3:35 she is
said to be the wife of ’Imran. Admittedly ’Imran is the same as the Hebrew Amram, who was the
father of Moses. Yusuf Ali explains this as meaning that Mary was descended from ’Imran and
married to a man named ’Imran (p. 131, n. 375). But this interpretation runs counter to the clear
statement in Matthew 1:6 that Jesus’ foster father, Joseph, was descended from David, of the
tribe of Judah rather than of Levi, and Mary seems to have descended from David as well, by a
collateral line (Luke 3:31). Hebrews 7:14 states: “For it is very evident that our Lord arose from
Judah, a tribe about which Moses said nothing concerning priestly office.” Therefore, Jesus’
mother and father both descended from Judah and not from Levi (as Amram and Miriam did). As
for the name of Mary’s husband, it was unquestionably Joseph, not ’Imran, who took her in
marriage. Therefore the reference to ’Imran must be an error in the Qur’an.

Sura 19—Maryam
:22 states that Mary gave birth to Jesus under a palm tree, rather than in a stable in the town of
Bethlehem as foretold in Mic. 5:2 and recorded in Matthew 2:1 and Luke 2:4–7, as taking place
in a stable connected with an inn. The three Magi who came looking for the recently born King
of the Jews, were directed by Herod’s Bible experts to look for Him down in Bethlehem, and it
was this information which soon afterward prompted Herod himself to send down a platoon of
butchers to Bethlehem in order to massacre all the baby boys in that town who were two years
old or younger. The birth under a palm tree is in complete variance with Old Testament prophecy
and New Testament records. The Coptic Church cherishes many traditions of the Holy Family
taking refuge in Egypt to escape from the murderous Herod until he died a year or two later.

Sura 20—Ta Na

:87, 94 inform us that when the Israelites set up their idolatrous golden calf in Ex. 32, they did so
at the instigation of a Samaritan: “And that was what the Samari/Samarian suggested.” Yusef Ali
suggests that Samariyyu may have been an Egyptian name meaning “stranger, foreigner,” or
possibly a Hebrew term derived from Shomer (“watchman”)—in a valiant effort to avoid the
charge of anachronism. Samaritans did not come into being as a race until after the 6th century
B.C., and so there could have been no Samaritan around as early as 1445 B.C.! But unhappily for
Ali’s explanation, the word “Samaritan” appears in standard Arabic dictionaries as Samariyyun,
spelled exactly the same as it is in this verse of Sura 20. There is no word or name like
Samiriyyu in the Egyptian lexicon.

Appendix 3
Anachronisms and Historical Inaccuracies in the Mormon Scriptures

1. In 1 Nephi 2:5–8, it is stated that the river Laman emptied into the Red Sea. Yet neither in
historic nor prehistoric times has there ever been any river in Arabia at all that emptied into the
Red Sea. Apart from an ancient canal which once connected the Nile with the coast of the Gulf
of Suez, and certain wadis which showed occasional rainfall in ancient times, there were no
streams of any kind emptying into the Red Sea on the western shore above the southern border of
Egypt.
2. Second, Nephi states that only the family of Lehi, Ishmael, and Zoram were left in Jerusalem
in 600 B.C. to migrate to the New World. These totaled fifteen persons, plus three or four girls, or
no more than twenty in all. Yet in less than thirty years, according to 2 Nephi 5:28, they had
multiplied so startlingly that they divided up into two nations (2 Nephi 5:5–6, 21). Indeed, after
arriving in America in 589 B.C., they are stated to have built a temple like Solomon’s. Now
Solomon’s temple required no less than 153,000 workers and 30,000 overseers (1 Kings 5:13,
15; 6:1, 38; 9:20–21; 2 Chron. 2:2, 17–18) to complete its erection in seven and a half years. It is
difficult to see how a few dozen unskilled workers (most of whom must have been children)
could have duplicated this feat even in the nineteen years they allegedly did the work. Nor is it
clear how all kinds of iron, copper, brass, silver, and gold could have been found in great
abundance (2 Nephi 5:15) for the erection of this structure back in the sixth-century B.C.
America.
3. According to Alma 7:10, Jesus was to be born at Jerusalem (rather than in Bethlehem, as
recorded in Luke 2:4 and predicted in Mic. 5:2).
4. Helamen 14:20, 29 states that darkness covered the whole earth for three days at the time of
Christ’s death (rather than three hours, as recorded in Matt. 27:45 and Mark 15:33), or beyond
Easter morning, which would have made it impossible for the woman at the tomb to tell whether
the stone had been rolled away from its mouth.
5. Alma 46:15 indicates that believers were called “Christians” back in 73 B.C. rather than at
Antioch, as Acts 11:26 informs us. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could have been labeled
Christian so many decades before Christ was even born.
6. Helamen 12:25–26, allegedly written in 6 B.C., quotes John 5:29 as a prior written source,
introducing it by the words “We read.” It is difficult to see how a quotation could be cited from a
written source not composed until eight or nine decades after 6 B.C.
7. Quite numerous are the instances in which the Mormon scriptures, said to have been in the
possession of the Nephites back in 600 B.C., quote from or allude to passages or episodes found
only in exilic or post-exilic books of the Old Testament. Several examples follow.
(i) First Nephi 22:15 states: “For behold, saith the prophet, the time cometh speedily that Satan
shall have no more power over the hearts of the children of men; for the day soon cometh that all
the proud and they who do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day cometh that they must be
burned.” Compare this with Mal. 4:1 (ca. 435 B.C.): “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn
as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that
cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor
branch.”
(ii) Second Nephi 26:9: “But the Son of righteousness shall appear unto them; and he shall heal
them, and they shall have peace with him, until three generations shall have passed away.”
Compare this with Mal. 4:2: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness
arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.” Note the
confusion between Son and Sun, which could only have originated from their similar sound in
the English language.
(iii) Third Nephi 28:21–22: “And thrice they were cast into a furnace and received no harm. And
twice they were cast into a den of wild beasts; and behold they did play with the beasts as a child
with a suckling lamb, and received no harm.” Compare this with Dan. 3 and 6 where such
adventures befell Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, along with Daniel himself. It is difficult to
understand how these Mormon believers could have had experiences just like those related in the
book of Daniel, which was not even composed until several decades after their alleged departure
for the New World in 589 B.C. (Daniel could have found written form only after the fall of
Babylon to the Persians in 539 B.C., since it contains at least fifteen Persian loanwords.)
(iv) Alma 10:2 states that Aminadi “interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the
temple, which was written by the finger of God.” Surely this is a reminiscence of Daniel’s feat in
reading the divine handwriting upon the wall of Belshazzar’s banquet hall in 539 B.C.
8. Even more remarkable is the abundance of parallels or word-for-word quotations from the
New Testament which are found in the Book of Mormon, which was allegedly in the possession
of the Nephites back in 600 B.C. Jerald and Sandra Tanner (The Case Against Mormonism, vol. 2
[Salt Lake City, 1967], pp. 87–102) have listed no less than 400 clear examples out of a much
larger number that could be adduced; and these serve to establish beyond all question that the
author of the Book of Mormon was actually well acquainted with the New Testament, and
specifically with the KJV of 1611. A few examples follow:
(i) First Nephi 4:13: “That one man should perish than that a nation should … perish in
unbelief.” Compare this with John 11:50: “That one man should die for the people, and that the
whole nation perish not.”
(ii) 1 Nephi 10:8: “Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” Compare this with John
1:27: “Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.”
(iii) 1 Nephi 10:9: “In Bethabara beyond Jordan … he should baptize.” Compare this with John
1:28: “In Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.”
(iv) 1 Nephi 11:22: “The love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children
of men.” Compare this with Rom. 5:5: “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost.”
(v) 1 Nephi 11:27: “The Holy Ghost come down out of heaven and abide upon him in the form
of a dove.” Compare this with Luke 3:22: “The Holy Ghost descended in bodily shape like a
dove upon him.”
(vi) 1 Nephi 14:11: “The whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had
dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.” Compare this
with Rev. 17:1, 15: “The great whore sitteth upon many waters … The waters which thou
sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.”
9. Most interesting is the recently exposed fraud of the so-called “Book of Abraham,” part of the
Mormon scripture known as The Pearl of Great Price. This was assertedly translated from an
ancient Egyptian papyrus found in the mummy wrappings of certain mummies which had been
acquired by a certain Michael H. Chandler. In 1835 Joseph Smith became very much interested
in these papyrus leaves, which he first saw in Kirtland, Ohio, on July 3, and arranged for the
purchase of both mummies and manuscripts. Believing he had divinely received the gift of
interpreting ancient Egyptian, he was delighted to find that one of the rolls contained the writings
of Abraham himself, whose signature he had personally inscribed in the Egyptian language. In
1842, Smith published his translation under the title, “The Book of Abraham” in Times and
Seasons. He even included three drawings of the pictures or vignettes appearing in the
manuscript, and interpreted the meaning of these illustrations: Abraham sitting upon the throne
of Pharaoh, the serpent with walking legs who tempted Eve in Eden. For many years this
collection of papyri was lost, but somehow they (or else a duplicate set of them from ancient
times) were presented to the Mormon Church by the Metropolitan Art Museum of New York
City on November 27, 1967. This made the translation skill of Joseph Smith susceptible of
objective verification. The unhappy result was that earlier negative verdicts of scholars like
Theodule Devaria of the Louvre, and Samuel A. B. Mercer of Western Theological Seminary,
and James H. Breasted of the University of Chicago, and W. M. Flinders Petrie of London
University (who had all been shown Smith’s facsimiles) were clearly upheld by a multitude of
present-day Egyptologists.
Their finding was that not a single word of Joseph Smith’s alleged translation bore any
resemblance to the contents of this document. It turned out to be a late, even Ptolemaic, copy in
hieratic script of the Sensen Papyrus, which belongs to the same genre as the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. As John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, described it
in a published letter written on March 16, 1966, it contains vignettes familiar from the Book of
the Dead. The first illustration shows the god of embalming named Anubis preparing the body of
the deceased for burial, with the soul hovering over his head in the form of a bird, and the
canopic jars containing the dead man’s inwards set beneath his bier. The third picture shows the
deceased led into the presence of Osiris, the infernal deity who judged the souls of the dead.
(This is what Smith had identified as Abraham sitting on Pharaoh’s throne!). Figure 2 was a
round disc made of cloth and jesso and customarily placed as a pillow under the head of a corpse
in the Late Egyptian period. The accompanying text, as can be ascertained from other copies of
this not uncommon document, deals with magical spells intended to open the mouth of the
deceased and to prepare him for his audience before Osiris in the judgment hall of the dead (as
set forth in detail in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, the Egyptian title of which is P-r m h-r-
w, or “The Going Forth by Day”). Needless to say, the completely mistaken concept of Joseph
Smith as to his competence in ancient Egyptian is now clearly demonstrated to be beyond debate.

Appendix 4
Inventory of the Biblical Manuscripts from the Dead Sea Caves

One of the chief concerns of the Qumran sect was the diligent study of the Hebrew Scriptures.
This was considered to be essential to the devoted service of God, to which these pious believers
were committed. At all times, night and day, there was to be continuous Bible study and
meditation, in groups of ten or more, each one of which was presided over by a priest.
Apparently the installation at Khirbet Qumran, the headquarters of the order, was erected during
the reign of Simon Maccabaeus (143–135 B.C.), whose assumption of power as both priest and
king over the Judaean commonwealth was felt to be clearly contrary to Scripture. (As Levites,
the family of the Maccabees, for all of their great prowess in throwing off the tyranny of
Antiochus Epiphanes and the Seleucid empire, could not serve on the throne, since that was
reserved for the descendants of King David.) If Frank M. Cross (The Ancient Library of Qumran
[New York: Doubleday, 1961] ) is correct in his interpretation of the allusions in the Habakkuk
Pesher and other pesharim, the “Wicked Priest” these refer to as the persecutor of the “Righteous
Teacher” (who founded the sect) was none other than Simon Maccabaeus himself, whose sons
perished along with him in an assassination perpetrated by his own son-in-law at Jericho
(regarded as the antitypical fulfillment of the curse upon the rebuilder of Jericho, according to
Josh. 6:26). We may thus account for the abundance of manuscript material datable on
paleographic grounds to the second century B.C. Apparently their truck-gardening and
manufacturing installation at ’Ain Feshka, a few miles south of Khirbet Qumran, was the place
where many of these leather scrolls were prepared from carefully tanned hides. (Cross contains a
list of published texts already available by 1957.)
 Cave One

1QIsa. The complete copy of all sixty-six chapters of Isaiah, dating from about 150 B.C. (the St.
Mark’s Monastery Isaiah Scroll).
1QIsb. An incomplete copy of the last half of Isaiah, with a portion of many of the pages missing
due to deterioration. But the text preserved closely approximates the consonantal text of the MT
(the Hebrew University Isaiah Scroll), ca. 50 B.C.
lQpHab. A verse-by-verse commentary on the first two chapters of Habakkuk in a text very
close to that of the MT. Each quoted verse is followed by a pesher indicating how it has been
fulfilled or will be fulfilled very shortly. This pesher refers to the “Teacher of Righteousness”
and “The Wicked Priest” and therefore has a historical value for the inter-testamental period. (M.
Burrows, et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark’s Monastery, 1 [1950], 2:2 [1951].)
1QM. (for Milhama, “War”). The “War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness”
scroll; a sectarian document containing plans for organization as a fighting force for God in the
soon expected “end time.” First century B.C.
1QS. (Serek, “Order”). “The Manual of Discipline” or “Rule of the Congregation,” as it is
variously called; the constitution and by-laws of the Qumran sect, with rules for membership,
service, communal activities, and discipline to maintain purity of faith and conduct. First century
B.C.
1QH. (Hodayot, “Praises”). Four sheets containing twenty noncanonical psalms of praise, with
some notable differences from the Psalter in language, speech, and theology. First century B.C.
lQpMic. (commentary or pesher on Micah). A fragment dealing with a portion of chapter 1 and
chapter 6; uses old epigraphic spelling for YHWH.
Pentateuch fragments. Some of these small scraps are in epigraphic script, and some (like the
Leviticus fragments BASOR 118 [Apr. 1950]: 21; cf. 28–30. DJD IQ 1955) may be as early as
fourth century B.C.
lQpPs. 68. A pesher fragment on Ps. 68.
lQJub. A fragment of the pseudepigraphical Book of Jubilees.
1QDan. A few fragments of Daniel in a second-century B.C. hand; one fragment shows where
the Hebrew leaves off and the Aramaic begins in chapter 2. (Pub. by John Trever in RQ no. 19
[1965]: 323–26, plates i-vi. DJD I: 150–52 (1:10–17; 2:2–6; MS-B; 3:22–28; 3:27–30).
1QApoc. The Genesis Apocryphon, a midrashic type of enlargement upon the biographies of
Noah and Abraham (possibly others in the lost columns). Only five columns legible out of
twenty-two. All in Aramaic. “Documents of Jewish Sectaries,” 1(1910). S. Zetlin, “The Zadokite
Fragments,” (1952), photographs. C. Rabin, “The Zadokite Fragments” (1958), transcription.

Cave Two

2QEx. Portions of Ex. 1, 7, 9, 11–12, 21, 26, 30; there is also a second MS represented
containing Ex. 18, 21, 34.
2QJer. Portions of Jeremiah chapters 42–46, 48–49.
2QLev. Portions of Lev. 11:22–28 in epigraphic script.
2QNum. Portions of Num. 3–4, 7, 18, 33.
2QDeu. Portions of Deut. 1, 10, 17.
2QRu. A fragment of Ruth 2:13–3:8, 14–18
2QPs. Portions of Pss. 103 (:6–8) and 104 (:6–11).
2QJub. A portion in Hebrew of Jubilees 46:1–2.
Fragments of liturgy in Aramaic, referring to a ceremony involving the use of bread.
Miscellaneous nonbiblical MS fragments, about forty in all.

Cave Three

3QIs. A tiny scrap of Isaiah 1:1, possibly with a pesher.

3QInv. The celebrated Copper Scroll, containing an inventory in Mishnaic Hebrew of three
strips 8’ x 1’ containing twelve columns listing sixty treasure caches belonging to the temple.
Associated with first-century A.D. pottery fragments.

Cave Four

4QSamA. Portions of 1 Sam. 1:22–2:6; 2:16–25. Twenty-seven fragments on leather in first-

century hand. Favors the LXX variants as over against the MT quite consistently. BASOR 132
(Dec. 53): 17. BA 17 (1959): 19. BA 36 (Dec. 73): 141. One fragment in Cross. ALQ 141
(plate).
4QSamB. In third-century B.C. hand. Uses more “defective” spelling than the MT (i.e., fewer
vowel letters); portions of 1 Sam. 19–21. Agrees with the LXX against the MT five times, but
with MT against LXX two times. F.M. Cross in JBL 74 (1955): 147–72. It also contains verses
found in neither the LXX nor the MT.
4QIs. Twelve different MSS represented, containing portions of Isa. 12–13, 22–23, in a late first-
century B.C. hand. Some loss of text through homoeoteleuton. Never favors the LXX against the
MT. (BASOR 135 (Oct. 54): 29, 31).
4QJerB. Verses 9:22–10:18, showing omissions of text similar to LXX. (See Cross, ALQ. 187.)
4QXII. A third-century B.C. cursive handwriting; seven different MSS represented from various
portions of the twelve Minor Prophets.
4QDeu. A fragment of Deut. 32, one scrap containing 32:41–43 written as poetry in hemistichs,
with some lacunae. There are thirteen different MSS of Deuteronomy represented in this cave.
4QEc. One fragment of Ecclesiastes in a third-century B.C. cursive, another ca. 150 B.C. greatly
resembling 1QIsa in style. (Cross: ALQ 141 [plate], BASOR 135 [Oct. 54]:22).
4QDan. A late second-century B.C. hand preserving both Dan. 2:4 and 8:1, the two transitional
passages (Hebrew to Aramaic and Aramaic to Hebrew, respectively).
4QEx. Portions of Ex. 6–18 in columns of thirty-two lines each. In narrative of the plagues,
tends to favor Samaritan as against the MT and the LXX. 4QExa—one fragment in Cross: ALQ
141 (plate). 4QEx.—4QExa, F. M. Cross, ALQ: 184–85; transliteration. 4QExc, F. M. Cross, JTC
5 (1968): 13–16. 4QpaleoExm, P. W. Skehan, JBL 74 (1955): 182–87. Cf. SWDS 16, 26. 4QExf,
F. M. Cross in SWDS 14: 23.
4QJob. In paleo-Hebrew epigraphic script, yet with Hasmonaean type proliferation of vowel-
letters (proving that paleo-Hebrew script was still used occasionally in second century B.C.).
4QCh. Six lines containing only four complete words from Chronicles.
4QPs. Ten different MSS of the Psalms represented. 4QPsf, J. Starcky, RB 73 (1966): 352–71:
apocryphal psalms. 4QPsq, J. T. Milik, “Biblica” 38 (1957): 245–55. 4QPs89 J. T. Milik, RB 73
(1966): 94–106.
4QLXX. Two fragments in Greek from the Septuagint (F. M. Cross does not specify which
passages in his “Report on the Biblical Fragments of Cave Four at Wadi Qumran” in BASOR no.
141 [Feb 1956].)
4QLXX Lev. (QHBT, 221–25—photographed and transcribed) 26:2–16. Skehan, VT suppl. 4
(1957): 159–60, cf. SWDS 15, 25.
4QLXX Num. (QHBT, 219–20) 3:40–42; 4:6–9 (QHBT, 268 photo). P. W. Skehan, VT suppl. 4
(1957): 155–56; photo in BA 28 (1965): 191.
4QNum. A fragment combining variants favoring LXX at times, the Samaritan Pentateuch at
other times, or combining the two together.
4QNab. The purported prayer of King Nabonidus of Babylon, after he was afflicted with a
severe inflammation (not insanity) in the city of Teman, Arabia (not in Babylon), and was
delivered by an unnamed Jewish exorcist. He acknowledges the impotence of idols and the
power of the God of the Hebrews. Written in Aramaic. RB 63 [1956] (Xerox), plate 2, (J. T.
Milik).
4Q158–186. Pesharim (“prophetic commentary”) J. M. Allegro with A. A. Anderson, DJD-5
(1968).
4QpIs. J. M. Allegro, JBL 75 (1956): 174–87, Document III; DJD-5, 11–15, Plates 4–5. J. M.
Allegro, JBL 77 (1958:) 215–21; DJD-5, 15–28, Plates 6–9. DJD-5, 28–30, Plate 9.
4QpHos. (4Ql66,167) J. M. Allegro, JBL75 (1956): 89–95; DJD-5, 32–36, Plate X. J. M.
Allegro, JBL 78 (1959): 142–47; DJD-5, 31–32, Plate X.
4QpNah. J. M. Allegro, JBL 75 (1956): 89–95; J. M. Allegro, JSS 7 (1962): 304–8; DJD-5, 37–
42, plates 12–14. cf. SWDS 17: 26–27. Y. Yadin, IEJ 21 (1971): 1–12.
4QpZeph. DJD-5, 42, Plate 14.
4QpPsa. J. M. Allegro, PEQ 86 (1954): 69–75, plate 18. J. M. Allegro, “The People of the Dead
Sea Scrolls,” plates 48 and 50 (86–87); DJD-5, 42–49. H. Stegemann, RQ 14 (1963): 235–70,
RQ 22 (1967): 193–210.
4QpPs60. DJD-5, 49–50, plate 17.
4QpPsb. A Commentary on Pss. 127, 129, and 118. DJD-5, 51–53, plate 18. CD Fragments of
the Damascus Covenant.

Cave Five

Fragments of Tobit (both Hebrew fragment and Aramaic fragment). Fragments of the Zadokite
Work (Damascus Covenant). RB 63 (1956 Xerox) pl. 1 (J. Milik).

Cave Six

Fragments of the Zadokite Work. 6QDan. pap (cf. DJD-1, p. 150).

Cave Seven

This cave is unique in that it contained no documents in Hebrew or Aramaic, but only in Greek.
7Q1 and 7Q2 were identified as Septuagintal in the original publication of these nineteen
fragments, but not until 1972 did Jose O’Callaghan in his “Papiros neotestamentarios en la cueva
7 de Qumran?” (in Biblica 7:1 [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1972], pp. 91–104) identify
several of the smaller fragments as belonging to the New Testament. Note that only Christians
used papyrus for their Scriptures, whereas the Jews preferred parchment or leather.
7Q1. Exodus 28:4–7 in a script known as Zierstil, used from about 100 B.C. to A.D. 50.
7Q2. Epistle of Jeremiah 43–44, likewise in Zierstil.
7Q4. 1 Timothy 3:16; 4:1, 3.
7Q5. Mark 6:52–53, also in Zierstil, apparently copied in Egypt (judging from a letter tau
erroneously substituted for a delta in the word diaparasantes), and featured by the omission of a
phrase (eis ten gen) which normally appears in this verse.
7Q61. Mark 4:28, in Herculanean script (used by scribes from A.D. 50 to 80).
7Q62. Acts 27:38, in Herculanean script (probable).
7Q7. Mark 12:17 in Zierstil (probable).
7Q8. James 1:23–24, in Herculanean script; implies omission of gar auton after the verb
katenoesen.
7Q9. Romans 5:11–12 (probably), perhaps late first century A.D. copy.
7Ql0. 2 Peter 1:15 (possibly); not enough text to establish date of copying.
7Ql5. Mark 6:48 (possibly); date uncertain.
 Cave Eleven

These documents seem to be from the first century A.D.

11QPs. Fairly complete texts of Pss. 93–150, but in a somewhat different order than that of the
MT. There are also eight additional, noncanonical psalms, including the “Psalm 151” of the
Septuagint. (BA [Dec. 73]: 139.)
11Qtarg Job. Fragments which are distinctly different from the later standard Targums.
11Q Melchiz. The fragment of a prose commentary in Hebrew concerning Melchizedek (cf.
Gen. 14:17–20), presenting him as a superhuman personage who will be involved in bringing
about God’s victory over His foes on earth at the end of the age (cf. M. de Jonge and A. S. van
der Woude: “Melchizedek and the New Testament” in New Testament Studies, no. 12, pp. 301–
26; first published in Oudtestamentlische Studien, no. 14, [Leiden, Netherlands, 1965], pp. 354–
73).
11QLev. Lev 9:23–10:2 is written in Hebrew with LXX readings. A. S. Van der Woude, Bibel
und Qumran (H. Bartke Fest. 1968): pp. 153–55. Cf. J. Strugnell, RB 77 (1970): 268.
11QEz. W. H. Brownlee, RQ 13 (1963) 11–28.
11QPs. J. A. Sanders, DJD-4 (1965); J. A. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll” (1967).
11QT. The Temple Scroll. A late third century list of regulations concerning the conduct of
public worship in the Second Temple. Presumably composed at Qumran.

Wady Murabba’at (Eighteen Miles South of Qumran)

1. Biblical fragments from Gen. 2:4; 32–35; Ex. 4 and 6; Deut. 10–12, 15; Isa. 1:4–14.
2. A Greek MS of the Minor Prophets, and such nonbiblical documents as:

(a) two personal letters from Simon ben Kosebah (Bar Kochba)

(b) two contracts in Aramaic

(c) some long MSS in Nabatean Aramaic, difficult to decipher

(d) a palimpsest in old epigraphic characters, containing a list of names, probably originating
in seventh century B.C.

(e) a fragment in Latin from second century A.D., apparently legal in character

(f) a letter from the administrators of Beit Mashbo.

 Excursus 1
Prediction and Fulfillment as Proof of Divine Inspiration

As was pointed out in chapter 2, the presence of predictions uttered by God, according to the
Biblical record, furnishes an infallible proof of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures
themselves. The previous announcement of events which are to occur in the future is admittedly
beyond the ability of any human being, except as he has received that prediction from the Lord
Himself. The test of fulfilled prophecy is clearly set forth in Deut. 18:20–22: “But the prophet
who shall speak a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak,
or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And you may say in
your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which LORD has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks
in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which
the LORD has not spoken.”
The frequent occurrence of prophecy in the Holy Scriptures is unique among all the purported
scriptures of non-Christian religions. False and unfulfilled predictions abound even among
deviant Christian sects, such as the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the
Mormons (if they can be classed as Christian at all, in view of their polytheism). The dates these
groups have set for the return of Christ and the advent of the Tribulation or the Kingdom of God
on earth have completely failed every time. But even in Old Testament times there were false
prophets like Hananiah, whom Jeremiah sternly denounced for predicting the defeat of
Nebuchadnezzar and the restoration of the holy vessels he had taken from the temple of Yahweh
(Jer. 28:2–4). In reply the true prophet, Jeremiah, predicted that not only would Hananiah’s
prediction prove utterly false, but that he himself would die within the current year—which he
did.
Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, approximately, 200 Scripture texts (not individual
verses) are predictive, many of which explicitly foretell with astounding accuracy major events
such as the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria in 722 B.C., the fall of Jerusalem and
deportation of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C., and most prominently, the coming of
Messiah, along with details of His life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Psalm 22 and Isa. 53
graphically detail the events and effects of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary with a clarity that
surpasses even the gospel narratives in intensity, pathos, and descriptive detail.
The accuracy and specificity of biblical prophecy is uncompromisingly unique and breathes with
the evidence of divine revelation recorded in the written oracles of the Old Testament. First
Kings 13:2 prophecies that Josiah, from the lineage of David, would arise to obliterate the
idolatrous worship Jeroboam I had instituted in Bethel. Three hundred years later, as recorded in
2 Kings 23:15–16, King Josiah of Judah fulfilled this prophecy explicitly, even to the matter of
burning of human bones upon that altar, in order to totally wipe out every matter of trace of
idolatry from the land.
A very comprehensive collection and analysis of nearly 600 topics of prediction in Holy
Scripture has been assembled by J. Barton Payne in his 754-page volume, Encyclopedia of
Biblical Prophecy (Harper & Row, 1973), which pertain to the era of the Old Testament and of
the New Testament as well, up to the present century. (He lists 127 more topics of predictions
pertaining to the Last Days and the Millennial Kingdom.) This immense body of evidence
renders all claim to uninspired human origin of the Bible totally absurd. Such a denial amounts
to a hide-bound fideism unworthy of any scholar who claims to be an intelligent thinker. There is
no possibility of explaining away 600 topics of fulfilled prophecies as within the competence of
uninspired human authorship.
The evidence of fulfilled prophecy lies not only in the realm of historical accuracy, but also in
volume. According to J. Barton Payne, 8,352 verses of the Bible are predictive; a total of 27
percent of the entire Bible. Of the total Old Testament Scripture texts that are predictive, 70
percent find fulfillment within the confines of the biblical narrative itself. The 30 percent that
remain unfulfilled are primarily eschatological in nature, i.e., the second coming of Christ, the
Millennial Kingdom, and the consummation of the Church Age. Virtually no prophetic utterance
recorded in Scripture pertaining to any event through to the advent of the Church in New
Testament narrative has failed to be fulfilled. Biblical prophecy is precise, explicit, and accurate
with a record of proven fulfillment that stands as its own testimony of conclusive evidence as to
the veracity of Scripture.
Those who wish to examine this evidence are invited to examine Encyclopedia of Biblical
Prophecy. But for the purposes of this excursus it will be sufficient to set forth a few striking
examples. Some of these prophecies were fulfilled before the completion of the Old Testament
canon, and therefore they may conceivably be explained away as vaticinia ex eventu (prophecies
invented after they had already been fulfilled). To treat them in this way betrays more of fideistic
closed-mindedness than of truly objective scholarship. It is most significant that there are
prophecies both in the Old Testament and the New Testament which were not fulfilled until a
period after the composition of all 66 books of the Bible had been completed.
But before discussing individual predictions, a few general observations are in order. Although
there are many specific events foretold, ranging over a broad field of interest and concern,
involving not only the fate of individual actors upon the stage of history, but also the fortunes of
cities, nations and empires, yet through them all there appears to be a unitary master plan. This is
no hodgepodge of isolated events, such as students of Nostradamus attempt to identify with later
events or the fortunes of various scoundrels or leaders, but what we find in Holy Scripture is a
concatenated series of developments relating to heroes of the faith and leaders of the people of
God. In other words, there is a marvelously crafted program of redemption, beginning with the
first promise of the Messiah in Gen. 3:15 and concluding with the complete triumph of the
divine-human Redeemer in the ultimate Millennial Kingdom and the union of heaven and earth
in the last two chapters of the Apocalypse. The final proclamation of victory in Revelation 22:13
is: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” In other
words, the Bible sets forth the drama of human redemption and the total defeat of the Prince of
Evil and all his works. We must take note of the fact that the Almighty Creator has a master plan
moving inexorably towards a predetermined goal, to the glory of the divine Redeemer whose
sacrificial death and glorious resurrection brought about the fulfillment of the purpose of the
Triune God in creating the human race.
1. Genesis 3:15 contains the first indication of this plan, as God affirms to the Satanic serpent:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He
shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.” Obviously this Messianic
descendant of Eve will suffer injury at Satan’s hand, but a bruised heel is capable of healing,
whereas a bruised or crushed skull is an injury of fatal consequence. This means that Jesus Christ
will be the final victor over all the forces of evil, and the earth will become completely subject to
His rule.
2. Genesis 15:13–16 sets forth God’s plan to produce a great and numerous race of believers
from a man like Abraham whose wife proved to be incapable of pregnancy until the age of
ninety. Not only did he have a son by her, but that son engendered a nation as numerous as the
stars in heaven. “And God said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be
strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred
years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out
with many possessions. And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried
at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here.’ ” The fulfillment of these
promises is unfolded step by step in the remainder of the Pentateuch. The people among whom
the descendants of Abraham are to multiply turns out to be Egypt, where their initial acceptance
under Joseph turned into degrading oppression under a new dynasty (probably Hyksos) who had
no regard for him. This slavery went on for four centuries (for Abram the interval between his
birth and the birth of his son was a hundred years) until finally they were be enabled by God’s
providence to return to the Promised Land.
3. Leviticus 26:44 contains the prediction that after the descendants of Abraham have taken
possession of the Holy Land, they will fall into such spiritual defection and apostasy that God
will have to consign them to the severe discipline of the Babylonian Exile, which occurred
between 605 and 536 B.C. But in their humiliating captivity they will repent of their disobedience
and unbelief and will be allowed to return to their native land in Canaan. Leviticus 26:44 reads:
“Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I
so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them, for I am Yahweh their
God.”
This same warning appears again in Deut. 28:36: “Yahweh will bring you and your king whom
you shall set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you
shall serve other gods, wood and stone.” Further on in this same chapter at verse 49 we read:
“Yahweh will bring against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle
swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand.” It becomes apparent that this
passage predicts a second captivity or exile from Palestine, for the invaders in this case come
from a region remote from the Middle East, speaking a language not at all Semitic (as was the
language of Babylon) and having an eagle for their military symbol. This strongly suggests the
Roman invasion and the dreadful events of the First Revolt (A.D. 67–70). Quite decisive for this
identification is verse 68: ‘And Yahweh will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about
which I spoke to you, ‘You will never see it again!’ And there you shall be offered for sale to
your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.” Josephus records that (Wars
6.9) when Titus finally stormed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, he had the 97,000 survivors dragged down
to Joppa and put aboard cargo ships, to be sold in Alexandria, Egypt (which was the largest slave
market in the Roman Empire) in order to be offered at bargain prices to whoever wanted to buy
them. But such an enormous number of slaves proved to be a glut on the market, and so finally
there were no bidders left to purchase them. All of the details of this prediction point so strongly
to the events of A.D. 70 as to make any other interpretation incapable of successful defense. It
should be noticed that this fulfillment could not have been a mere vaticinium ex eventu, for this
would postpone the composition of Deuteronomy until the late first century A.D., and we have
many fragments of Deuteronomy preserved in the Qumran caves dating from the second century
B.C. or earlier.
4. Isaiah 13:19 reads: “And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’ pride,
will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Verse 20 continues: “It will never be
inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, nor will
shepherds make their flocks lie down there.” Note that at the time this prophecy was written
down by Isaiah in the early seventh century B.C., Babylon was the most wealthy and prosperous
city of the ancient world. If any capital in all of the Middle East had a prospect of indefinite
survival, surely Babylon would seem the most likely of them all. Isaiah’s prediction must have
seemed just as absurd as if some pundit of our present century would predict that Manhattan,
New York, would some day become a deserted wasteland without a building still standing. And
yet the time came when Babylon was not only conquered and overthrown by foreign enemies,
but even became uninhabitable because of the extreme salinization of its surrounding farmlands
after more than two millennia of irrigation from the saltbearing waters of the Euphrates. It was
later avoided as a site accursed by Allah after the Muslim conquest.
The reference to Arab shepherds is highly significant in this passage, especially in view of the
fact that there were no Arabs at all in this Mesopotamian region until the eighth century A.D.
Here again the resort to vaticinium ex eventu proves to be untenable. For many centuries the
location of Babylon was largely conjectural, and its tell known as Birs Nemroud. Not until the
19th century and the extensive excavation carried on by Koldewey was it confirmed as the true
location of the ancient megalopolis, and even to this day it remains without any residential
population, apart from the tourist-trap motivation of the Hussein regime, somewhat like the ghost
towns of our Far West.
5. Isaiah 52:13–15; 53:1–12. This celebrated passage concerning the suffering, death and
resurrection of the Servant of the Lord, composed during the reign of King Manasseh, sets forth
the role and experience of Jesus of Nazareth with amazing accuracy. Isaiah 52:13–15 predicts
both the amazing exaltation of Christ and His equally amazing humiliation in terms anticipatory
of Phil. 2:6–11. Isaiah 53:1 foretells the incredulity of the Jewish public towards Jesus after He
began His three years of preaching ministry. Isaiah 53:2 predicts the humble circumstances of
His birth and childhood rearing up in Nazareth of Galilee. Isaiah 53:3 indicates that His
countrymen would despise and reject Him, and that he would be a man of sorrows, acquainted
with grief. Isaiah 53:4–5 affirms that He would be smitten and pierced for the sins of His people,
rather than for any wickedness of His own. Isaiah 53:6 declares that all mankind has gone astray
in sin, but that the Servant of the Lord would suffer death in their place and on their behalf.
Verse 7 foretells His refusal to speak up in His own defense when He would be unjustly accused
in court—a court procedure conducted with injustice and oppression. Verse 9 predicts that He
would be buried in a rich man’s tomb, and verse 10 states that His death would serve as a guilt-
offering (asham) that would atone for the sins of mankind, and indicates that after His death He
would behold His spiritual offspring, His disciples, and that He would “prolong His days”—a
statement that unmistakably implies His resurrection after death and His fellowship with His
believers on earth after He had risen from the dead. Verse 12 proclaims His final triumph over
the forces of evil as the blessed result of His substitutionary atonement and His intercession for
all those who repent and put their trust in Him. Every one of these predictions is clearly pointed
out in the New Testament record.
Skeptical critics are completely unable to come up with any other candidate as the fulfiller of this
prophetic portrait of the Servant of Yahweh. Hezekiah, Josiah, and Isaiah himself, have all been
proposed, but none of them even approaches the fulfillment of all these specifications. Most
unsatisfactory of all is the suggestion that Israel itself is the fulfillment of Isa. 53. For nowhere in
Isaiah or any of the prophets of Israel is there the slightest intimation that the Hebrew nation, or
any more spiritual segment of it, has maintained the absolute sinlessness predicated of the
Servant in 53:9. On the contrary the prophets all unite in indicting their countrymen as
inexcusably guilty sinners deserving of God’s judgment. Even apart from that, no one has ever
explained how, if the Servant is really the nation Israel, it could be said to have borne the
punishment and death of Israel in the place of Israel instead of Israel! Such an argument borders
on total irrationality.
6. Daniel 9:25–26 records the angelic revelation that there is going to be a word or decree
granted by the king (the Persian king, that is) to authorize the rebuilding of post-exilic Jerusalem.
A span of 69 heptads of years will intervene between that decree and the appearance of Messiah
the Prince. Since the decree of Cyrus issued in 537 B.C. pertained only to the successful
rebuilding of the Temple rather than the walls of the city, it could hardly be the intended
terminus a quo. Some have supposed that the permission granted to Nehemiah by Artaxerxes I
which resulted in the rebuilding of the city walls must be the correct starting-point for the 483
years, but Neh. 1:3–4 clearly indicates that an earlier attempt had already been made to rebuild
the walls and gates of Jerusalem. However it appears that some hostile forces had burned up and
broken down the structures which had been attempted. Therefore upon hearing these tidings from
Hanani, Nehemiah was grievously disappointed, and prayed that God would intervene on his
behalf and on behalf of the Holy City. This leaves only the return of Ezra in the seventh year of
Artaxerxes (or 457 B.C.) as the correct terminus. Ezra 9:9 clearly refers to such a royal
permission, for there Ezra prays about the boon granted by “the kings of Persia.… to give us a
wall in Judah and Jerusalem.” It is fair to assume that the same hostile neighboring nations which
later threatened Nehemiah himself were responsible for the violence done to Ezra’s earlier
building efforts. If this was indeed what happened (as the evidence strongly suggest) this means
that the 69 heptads should be reckoned from 457 B.C. This means that 457 subtracted from 483
comes out to A.D. 26. But since we actually gain a year when moving from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1, it
really come out to A.D. 27. This means that Messiah the Prince would begin his ministry in A.D.
27, or three years before A.D. 30 when Jesus was crucified. How can we explain this amazingly
accurate prediction? Certainly not on the basis of vaticinium ex eventu!
No other explanation will account for this pattern of prediction and fulfillment except authentic
revelation by God Himself as the Lord of history and providence. It is logically impossible to
explain the Bible as a book of mere human composition. To reject such an overwhelming body
of evidence as this and to hold to a theory of mere human authorship is to forsake all reason and
logic in the interests of fideistic subjectivism, scarcely worthy of honest scholarship.

Excursus 2
Additional Data from Ebla
A fine summary of the discoveries of Ebla may be found in the appendix to the French Edition of
this Survey of Old Testament Introduction, published by Editions Emmaus in Saint-Legier,
Switzerland in 1978. This is Appendix 4, pp. 585, consisting of a French translation of an
excellent article by Heinrich von Siebenthal of Basel composed in German. This is perhaps the
finest short discussion of the discoveries and language of Ebla. But a much fuller discussion is
found in The Archives of Ebla written by Giovanni Pettinato himself, with a supplemental
section composed by Dr. Mitchell Dahood (Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y., 1981). As the
primary decipherer and translator of the Eblaite tablets, Pettinato furnishes a wealth of
information, replete with charts and translations of various significant documents in that
language. On page 43 he presents a copy of the cuneiform text of TM.74.G.120. The formation
of the cuneiform characters greatly resembles that of the Code of Hammurabi from the 18th
century B.C., and it contains a large list of theophoric personal names.
As he analyzes the native language of the Eblaites (in contradistinction to the Sumerian in which
most of their records were composed), he notes that the verbal stems of this dialect resemble the
Akkadian system, with the patterns qatal, the qittil for intensive, and šiqtil for the causative,
while niqtal furnishes the passive voice. Even the Akkadian use of the prefix conjugation for past
time appears in Eblaite, as in ištama the Gt of šama˒ (although no ˒ayin could be expressed in
any cuneiform language except Ugaritic), meaning “he heard” (rather than “he hears” or “will
hear” of NW Semitic). For the most part the verbal prefixes and sufformatives correspond to
those of Akkadian, yet there is an occasional t-prefix which is used with a masculine subject
contrary to all the other Semitic languages. Nevertheless, despite this conformity to East Semitic
in the morphology of the verb, the vocabulary choice is so strongly on the side of Canaanite that
he links it more closely with NW Semitic than with Akkadian. He is not comfortable with
identifying it as Old Amorite, as Ignace Gelb and others have suggested, yet he makes no really
satisfactory identification with any other language group known to Semitic scholarship.
As to the history of Ebla (which, by the way, reveals an era of North Syrian power in the late
Third Millennium B.C. of which we had almost no knowledge previously), the foundation for
which was King Igrish Halam, who raised City II to a strong military power. He was followed by
Irkab-Damu, Ar-Ennum (contemporary with Sargon of Agade, who for a time held domination
over him), then Ebrium (a very successful and powerful king), Ibbi-Sippis, and Dubaha-Ada (in
whose reign Naram-Sin of Agade succeeded in totally destroying the city around 2250 B.C.). But
by 2000 City III was built by the surviving Eblaites, who restored it to a certain measure of
recovery, although not to what it had been before. It was the discovery of a statue base of King
Ibbit-Lim of this dynasty that first revealed that Tell Mardikh was indeed the site of Ebla, for it
bore the words: “The King of Ebla.” In its heyday, City II had numbered at least 260,000
inhabitants according to its own documentation. (Cf. Pettinato, op. cit. 44.) (This size population
serves to substantiate the historical accuracy of the figure of 120,000 infants in Nineveh
specified in Jonah 4:11—a figure which some critics had dismissed as perfectly legendary, prior
to this decade.)
As to the religion of the Eblaites, their pantheon consisted mostly of Canaanite deities. They
seem to have counted up to 500 gods (Pettinato, p. 245), although the most prominent of them
were Dagan (Philistine Dagon), Rasap (Akkadian Nergal), Sipis (god of the sun, Sumerian Utu,
Akkadian Shamash), Astar (god of the planet Venus, later known as the goddess Istar or
Ashtoreth), Kamish (perhaps related to the Moabite Chemosh), Il (the Ugaritic king-god El) and
Yau or Ya (which resembles the short form of Yahu or Yahweh in Hebrew, even though not
conceived of as a supreme god, by any means.)
One intriguing feature that so far denies explanation is that during the reign of Ebrium there was
a tendency to shift from the use of -il at the end of proper names to the ending -ia or -ya. Thus
the former En-na-il was replaced by or favored over, En-na-ia; Iš-ra-il became Iš-ra-ia; Iš-ma-il
appears as Iš-ma-ia, Mi-ka-il becomes Mi-ka-ia, and so forth (Pettinato, op, cit., p. 249). It is
amazing to see such Hebrew names as Israel, Ishmael and Michael employed in pagan Syria as
early as 2500 B.C., well before the birth of Abraham, not to mention the period of Moses and the
Hebrew monarchy. There are other names referred to which had formerly been dismissed as
unhistorical by 19th-century scholarship which are now confirmed by their appearance in Ebla
documents. Thus King Tudiya was formerly regarded as merely legendary, even though he was
referred to as the first king of Assyria. But in an Eblaite manifesto dealing with taxation
obligations of the Assyrians to pay taxes to the government or merchants of Ebla, a threatening
malediction is invoked upon Tudiya if he ever fails to comply (Pettinato, pp. 104–5).
It is quite significant that we have such evidence of international treaties in the Middle East as
early as the third millennium B.C. But there are at least ten international treaties recorded or
referred to in the documents of Ebla. In fact there are no less than seventeen kingdoms listed as
subject to Ebla according to a schoolboy’s text datable to the period of King Ebrium (op. cit., pp.
106–7).
The end result of all of these new data from Ebla is that much more history was taking place
back in the time of Abraham and his successors than the Documentarian scholars knew anything
about as they condemned the Genesis records as unreliable. What they really must recognize at
this end of the 20th century is that arguments e silentio are far from trustworthy.

Excursus 3
Liberal Scholarship in the 20th Century

As indicated at the end of chapter 7, the present excursus is intended to inform the student
concerning the contributions made by some of the leading rationalistic scholars of the second
half of this 20th century. In pursuing this discussion and analysis of the Pentateuch and the
Prophets we have chosen to center our review on such leading figures such as Gerhard von Rad
and Brevard Childs along with others who occupy the same Liberal position.

Gerhard von Rad

Von Rad’s basic presupposition is that the Hexateuch represents Israel’s developed confession of
faith that already had attained a fixed form in terms of both structure and proclamation at an
early time. In the centuries which followed, additional layers of tradition were superimposed
upon these simple confessional statements. Von Rad assumes the validity of the Documentary
analysis of the Graf/Kuenen/Wellhausen school. Therefore he assumes that Yahweh was not
“venerated as creator of the world” (Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, p. 136), until the 7th or 6th
c. B.C. Von Rad states “the lateness of the emergence of the doctrine of creation was that it took
Israel a fairly long time to bring the older beliefs they already possessed into proper theological
relationship with the tradition that was their very own, that is, what they believed about the
saving acts done by Yahweh in history. In the old cultic credo there was nothing about creation”
(p. 136).
In this connection we should observe the religious writings of all Israel’s neighbors had very
definite statements about creation very early. The Egyptian traditions, although difficult to date,
trace to a time long before the age of Moses. In a text carved in the inside of the pyramid of Mer-
ne-Re or Pepi II of Dynasty VI (24th c. B.C.), Atum-Kheprer is credited with having spit out Shu,
the god of air, and the goddess Tefnut, the goddess of moisture. This speaks of the creation of the
first elements of nature which were a prelude to the creation of other things (ANET2, p. 3). But
the Shabaka Stone inscription from Memphis, dating from 2700 B.C. says Shu and Tefnut were
the first deities created. “There came into being as the heart and there came into being as the
tongue (something) in the form of Atum. The mighty Great One is Ptah, who transmitted [life to
all gods], as well as (to) their kds, through this heart, by which Horus became Ptah, and through
this tongue, by which Toth became Ptah” (ANET2, p. 5).
The Mesopotamian creation myth (“Enuma Elish”) on tablet I states, “When on high heaven had
not been named, firm ground below had not been called by name, naught but primordial Apsu,
their begetter, (and) Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, their waters commingling as a
single body; no reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared. When no gods whatever
had been brought into being, uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined—Then it was that
the gods were formed within them. Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were
called” (ANET2, p. 61). This Akkadian myth from Ashurbanipal’s library originated prior to the
time of Hammurabi, centuries prior to Moses. Pritchard states “The extant form of this document
dates only to 700 B.C., but linguistic, philological, and geopolitic evidence is conclusive in
support of its derivation from an original text more than 2000 years earlier” (ANET2, p. 4).
Pritchard further notes, “None of the extant texts antedates the first millennium B.C. On the
internal evidence, however, of the context and linguistic criteria, the majority of the scholars
would assign the epic to the Old Babylonian period, i.e., the early part of the Second Millennium
B.C. There does not seem to be any convincing reason against this earlier dating” (ANET2, p. 60).
The fallacy von Rad follows is that if there is no surviving record dating back to a specific
period, then you have proof-positive that creation was never conceived of prior to that document,
i.e., document E in the 8th or 9th c. B.C. Of the literature that survived from the time of Moses,
apart from Egyptian and Akkadian, no more than 3 % is extant. If over 90% of the documents
have disappeared, to reason that the ancient Hebrews never entertained belief in a monotheistic
Creator God is a complete fallacy.
It is very strange that von Rad, being aware of the much earlier literature of the Egyptians and
Babylonians, could assume that even though they had theories of creation in their literature, the
Hebrews never formulated their own view of creation until the theoretical “Deutero-Isaiah” or
the so-called Priestly document period around the time of Ezra. It is certainly a fallacy of logic to
say that the Hebrews had no theory of how creation came to pass, in view of abundant literature
from the Nile and Mesopotamian Valley that speculates about creation well before 2000 B.C.
Von Rad assumes that we have in the Bible an account of God’s reaching out with redemptive
grace to lead a specific people to a stage of religious maturity that specifically is monotheistic.
Therefore, he brings in a pre-history, whether fictional or factual, that would be part of the
development of his theory of God’s saving grace. But it is difficult to imagine how the Psalms
that speak in great detail of how God delivered His people out of Egyptian bondage and brought
them safely through the Red Sea and over the Jordan, could have been making up sheer fiction
out of whole cloth. This is not the way national traditions are built up in any culture; they go
back to actual world events.
What we have in von Rad is an eclecting and choosing of elements of thought or religion, as
suggested by Hegelian dialectic. Yehezkel Kaufmann, however, presents strong evidence to
show that there is no truly demonstrable element in any part of the Torah that allows the
legitimacy of faith in the existence of more than one God so far as the early Hebrews were
concerned, even back in patriarchal times. This well-proven conclusion on Kaufmann’s part was
overlooked completely by German scholarship and most unjustifiably so, especially in view of
the fact that Kaufmann himself affirmed adherence to the JEPD hypothesis, even though he
insisted P was not by any means the only source that committed itself to monotheism. But
actually, he insisted, the very earliest levels of Torah tradition, even prior to document J,
cherished a concept of the unity of God and His sole legitimacy as a deity to be worshiped.
Von Rad states, “Previous historical research nevertheless still believed it possible to grasp the
actual historical course of events, in its basic features at any rate, by a more or less immediate
penetration behind the literary presentation. But this has turned out to be mistaken, since what
lies at the back of the picture offered in the Hexateuch is still far from being the actual course of
events, but is again only certain interpretations of conceptions of older tradition which originate
in milieux very different from one another which must be judged from the view of form
criticism, as completely diverse” (Old Testament Theology, vol. 1, pp. –).
It should be added that “historical intuition” on the part of a modern critic characteristically
assumes that unique events could never have taken place at all, since factual history can consist
only of repeatable episodes. But this is a complete fallacy, for the progress of mankind through
the ages has been marked by many unique events which have controlled subsequent history in a
most decisive way. By the likelihood criterion Alexander the Great, for instance, could never
have built up an enormous empire extending from Yugoslavia to Pakistan in only four or five
years of warfare. Or again, only one successful invasion of England has ever taken place, and
that was under William the Conqueror in 1066 A.D. Even in our present generation what
analogue can be found to the sudden collapse of the whole Marxist empire (apart from China and
North Korea) can be discovered in the annals of history? The dogma of probability proves utterly
untenable at this point and should be discarded as a controlling criterion for the history of the
Bible. After all, what could be more improbable than the unique event of the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in its effect upon all of subsequent history?

Brevard Childs
One interesting observation that Brevard Childs brings into his treatment of the Old Testament
canon is that there seems to have been a policy of purposeful arrangement of the Old Testament
books into a logical pattern that was hardly feasible before the completion of the Hebrew
Scriptures. Childs suggests that in the final composition and arrangement of the thirty-nine Old
Testament books there was an artistic balancing out of type and antitype in the final disposition
of the text (e.g., the Garden of Eden serves as a sort of prototype of Jerusalem).
It should be understood Brevard Childs embraces the Documentary Hypothesis as valid in the
matter of explaining how the text of Scripture actually came into being; he accepts the basic
postulate that the Bible is simply a piece of human literature composed perhaps by gifted people,
but by no means supernatural in origin or divine in its authority or inspiration.
But on the other hand, Childs devotes his attention to the Scripture as it has come down to us in
its canonical form and tries to focus attention upon what the human authors (whoever they were)
believed and were trying to communicate to those who studied their works. Thus we may say
that Childs treats the Hebrew Scripture as a valuable and useful piece of literature, but not
essentially different from any other piece of great literature from the past. In other words, we are
to deal with the Bible in the same respectful way we would deal with the epics of Homer or
Virgil, or the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Childs, then, studies the Bible to come to grips with the
message conveyed by this literary masterpiece, rather than belaboring the higher critical
questions of origin and the historic development of the Hebrew text as it has come down to us.
His concern in his canonical or structural approach is to come to terms with what the Bible, as
we have it, has to say, so that we may properly interpret each book or passage in the light of the
literary genre to which it belongs.
Dennis Olson observes, “Childs, however, objects to the Enlightenment’s claim to confine the
Bible solely to the arena of human experience (historical, sociological, or psychological
explanations). Biblical theology must take seriously a dimension of scripture that historical
criticism often excludes, namely, the function of the Bible as a witness or testimony pointing
beyond itself to a divine reality external to the text. The canonical approach seeks to move
beyond the location of biblical texts in specific ancient times and places as the goal of
interpretation. The canonical approach seeks to uncover the various ways in which biblical texts
have been shaped so that they may address and confront succeeding generations in witness to the
ongoing reality of the living God” (The Princeton Seminary Bulletin XIV, no. 3 [1993]: 297).
Childs also seems to imply that it is possible for a careful student to come up with intuitive
insights that could possibly emanate from God through the Scripture. But discriminating
judgment is required if we are to figure out what is from God, what is nationalistic, what is
rationalistic, or what is mere human tradition.
It should be added that a similar approach is observable in the writings of his predecessors, Barth
and Brunner. In Barth’s Church Dogmatics, we find that he does his best to examine each
passage of Scripture with great respect, with a view to an intelligent interpretation of what it is
saying and what it implies. Yet, he also indicates we can not equate any written document in the
entire Scripture as being the written Word of God. What Scripture does do is to point to the
living Word of God, which is Christ. There seems to be a clear desire on his part to accept Christ
as true God, which gives neoorthodoxy its specific character as Crisis Theology. (This Barthian
approach came out as a revolutionary development on the heels of World War I.)
Barth and Brunner were both preachers in Switzerland and Germany who went through the
tragedy of defeat in 1918 and the humiliating disappointment of German imperialistic hopes. Yet
it was this very frustration which led to abandonment of the triumphal rationalism of the
Documentarian School and drove Neo-orthodox scholars to search for the meaning and role of
man in the presence of God. They went back to the Scripture with the feeling that if one has a
sense of personal confrontation between God the Holy Spirit and the human reader, there might
be a life changing heart-response to the message which could very well be accepted as an
authentic insight or revelation from God. This Neo-orthodox approach requires a high level of
intuition and one which is beyond objective verification. The Bible student must then somehow
trust the infallibility of his own subjective judgment as being inerrant as he comes to an
understanding of Scripture.

Martin Noth

Of the Old Testament Liberal establishment, Martin Noth is perhaps the most extreme critic of
the whole fraternity. In his Commentary On Numbers, Noth offers his criticisms about the lack of
unity and the inconsistencies that he claims to have found in the text. For example he points to
Edom’s refusal to allow the Israelites to pass through their land. Noth concludes that the
language is so inconsistent, as to be unable to determine who is speaking in the various sections.
This leads him to believe that there was conflation from several sources.
He assumes that an ancient author has to follow the same rules of consistency and style that he
would in the European culture of the 20th century A.D. This of course is a highly questionable
assumption, but it is more than doubtful that a truly unbiased reader would perceive these alleged
inconsistencies with which he charges the Hebrew author of Numbers. Only by a kind of hostile
desire to discover discrepancies that would never occur to an ordinary reader can Noth come out
to this judgment. For example, to say that the series of prophecies given by Balaam do not lead
to any definite result is to overlook the obvious thrust of these successive oracles. Most readers
would come to the conclusion they did indeed lead to a definite result; namely the survival and
the triumph of the followers of Moses as they took over possession of the land of Canaan which
God had promised from the time of Abraham. Furthermore, they indicate the futility of
attempting to resist the will and plan of God by the use of the occult or of hostile magic such as
King Balak desired to have Balaam perform. In fact, the passage is a magnificent testimony to
the faithfulness and the sovereignty of God, both of which may be of no scholarly interest to
Martin Noth. The bias here is so obvious as to make his analysis altogether tendentious rather
than the objective scholarly type of analysis that one should expect of a well trained
Alttestamentler. The fact of the matter is that even a child may read through the text of Numbers
without perceiving any of these dreadful inconsistencies and confusions which Dr. Noth feels he
has discovered. Apparently the presuppositions of the reader have a profound effect upon one’s
analysis.

Mediating Critics

Terrance Keegan states, “What is most important is the text which is accepted by the Church as
canonical. This canonically accepted text is the starting point of all biblical exegesis.” Randolph
Tate further elaborates, “Canonical criticism is more concerned with the text as accepted by the
believing community than what lies behind the text itself.”
Keegan agrees with Childs in commending the approach of canonical criticism in dealing with
the Bible and by that term they understand what was accepted by the historic church as
canonical. Therefore interest must be centered on the text that has come down to us as canonical
and authoritative, and we are to endeavor to catch the meaning of what the text is saying in the
form in which it has come to us, rather than confining ourselves to theories as to how those texts
historically came into being. Canonical criticism therefore deals with what we actually have in
our hands as Scripture which contains a message for us in our day. Therefore it is a matter of
accepting this religious document as having a bearing on the life of modern man for him to
follow and to believe according to his own personal choice. This mediating view, however, fails
to take into account that a book classified as canonical cannot be accepted as final unless the
reader is given to understand that it is a faithful document in all it affirms concerning the history
of revelation and the gracious dealings of God. If it is to be treated as a message from God, then
it won’t suffice to say that it arose as a series of pseudepigraphs in the way the Documentarian
School maintains.
In other words, the quality of historical trustworthiness is indispensable for a book in the Canon
to exercise a meaningful religious function. Randolph Tate writes, “Exegetical concern is not
primarily centered on what lies behind the text but on the text itself. Also important within
canonical criticism is the situation of the reader. Readers produce meaning in their present
situation. This idea of reader produced meaning however holds true only for members of the
believing community” (p. 183). In response to this we must observe that reader-produced
meaning is only possible if the reader himself believes that the meaning he derives is actually
conveyed by the text as the revealed word of God.

General Reflections on the Methodology of Liberal Higher Criticism

Now that we have completed a survey of the history and development of modern higher
criticism, it seems appropriate to point out certain basic presuppositions which fatally vitiate the
Liberal methodology of handling evidences on anything better than a subjective basis and
renders their scholarly endeavors a mere exercise in futility. This may sound like a harsh
judgment, but for one who has been trained in the laws of legal evidence and who observes how
grossly these guidelines observed in a law court are basically ignored in practice from Astruc to
von Rad, we can hardly come to any other conclusion.
The Holy Bible is assumed to be a mere piece of religious literature to liberal scholars, purely
human in origin and reflective of an evolution of religious thought, a product of Hegelian
dialectic process (thesis, antithesis and synthesis). Far from being an authentic revelation of a
personal God and His will for the human race, it is assumed to be a mere invention of human
minds, devoid of any demonstrable trustworthiness or authority whatever, except insofar as the
modern critic personally approves of it and endorses it as valid. No serious account is taken of
the many infallible proofs of divine inspiration with which the sixty-six books of the Bible
abound. Even to suggest an investigation of these evidences is absolutely unthinkable in the
minds of the Liberal establishment. To propose any kind of objective examination is to invite
ridicule and scorn from the practitioners of the Documentary Hypothesis or Form Criticism or
Canonical Criticism who maintain a rigid control of the Biblical studies department in most of
our present day universities and state-supported seminaries throughout the Western World.
The amazing feature about this Bible-denigrating procedure is its flagrant violation of the rule
against circular reasoning which underlies all evidential logic. To the rationalistic mind-set of the
Aufklarung and the Encyclopedistes of the mid-eighteenth century it was well-nigh
inconceivable for any educated thinker to take seriously the truth-claims of Holy Scripture, and
those who undertook to do so were ridiculed as benighted and naive, no matter what scholarly
attainments they had achieved in their education. If they really believed that the Bible was the
Word of God, they were ipso facto outdated traditionalists who could be safely ignored.
From the standpoint of legal evidence, such a cavalier trampling upon the rights of a defendant in
a criminal court proceeding would be completely disallowed. Yet the Scriptures are treated to the
same procedure as that practiced by the Spanish Inquisition. Confined in a dungeon without a
possibility of contact by any friend or relative or legal counsel, the hapless prisoner was
confronted only by stern inquisitors who announced to him, “We know you are guilty already,
and no testimony in your defense will be allowed.” In this case, then, the Bible is assumed to be
of mere human origin, and therefore no evidence of divine authorship can be seriously
entertained. There is little possibility for one who has gone through Liberal training to learn how
to understand and preach the Bible as the Word of God or to come through that training with any
measure of religious conviction. He may learn how to pick and choose elements in the Scriptures
that appeal to him as being valid, but since the validation has to come from the human critic, it
ends up with no greater measure of authority than that possessed by the human judge, thus the
doctrinaire specialists fall into many fallacies that essentially go back to a naive belief in their
own superior judgment.
One of the most amazing features of the modern Liberal scholarship is its complete ignoring of
the overwhelming evidence afforded by the multitude of fulfilled predictions with which the
Bible abounds. The whole idea of fulfilled prophecy is absolutely unanswerable on humanistic
grounds. It is beyond the ability of any man to foretell with accuracy what is going to happen in
advance. It is still more impossible for us to predict an entire series of events according to a
coordinated plan extending over thousands of years. Yet the Bible record indicates God’s
amazing plan of redemption for the race descended from Adam and Eve as early as Gen. 3:15. A
descendant of Eve is destined to crush the head of the Satanic serpent after it has bruised the heel
of the Redeemer. The rest of the Bible unfolds the execution of this program of redemption,
relating the atoning death of the God-Man on the cross, His subsequent rising from the dead on
Easter morning, and His ultimate triumph upon His return to crush the rebellious world at
Armageddon, and after a thousand-year reign upon earth, to bring about the merger of heaven
and earth in the New Jerusalem.
Skeptics may attempt to dismiss this redemptive scenario by supposing that Jesus was mistaken
about His messianic role on Golgotha, and that the bodily resurrection of Christ never really took
place. But they can never explain why the craven, panicked disciples of Jesus were transformed
into death-defying proclaimers of the Resurrection triumph over death—unless they knew that it
really happened, and that they really did see Him and touch His wounds and eat food with Him
as the Conqueror over sin and death. No disciple would ever be willing to lay down his own life
in faithfulness to a leader who actually died and never rose again. Skeptics may discount these
records in the four Gospels and in the New Testament epistles, but they cannot cite any ancient
written records from the same period as the First Century apostles to furnish justification for
their rejection of the resurrection testimony. All they can argue is they do not believe in miracles,
and therefore no miracle could ever have taken place.
But for a modern scholar, living over nineteen centuries after the fact, to reject all testimony of
the miraculous is to betray an irrational fideism which could hardly be received as evidence in
court. In the last analysis there is no thinker alive, not even an atheist, who does not assume the
occurrence of miracle. That is to say, he who does not believe that creation came into being
through a Creator is forced to resort to a dogma of the eternity of matter—a completely
untenable position to hold, in view of the discoveries of nuclear fission. The only alternative left
is the supposition that matter was created by Nothing! It will not do to say that everything fell
into its present shape by the operation of chance, because chance is not and cannot be a creative
force. Chance is only a calculation of observed occurrences of phenomena under study. But
chance can no more create or arrange matter than a clock can create time. Therefore we can only
conclude that the person who supposes creation could have come into being without a creator
holds to a theory of total impossibility rather than a more reasonable theory that for every effect
there must be a cause. Thus such a rationale becomes a dismal form of irrationality which can
have no credibility or standing either in theology or in science.
The fulfilled predictions contained in the Old Testament number more than 800—and all of them
beyond the ability of mortal man to foretell. We may start with the promise of God to Abraham
and Sarah that they would produce a family which would grow into a great nation (Gen. 12:–)
which would bring blessing to all other nations, whose converts would far outnumber the lineal
descendants of Abraham in the age to come. Customarily the rationalist higher critic tries to
explain away all fulfilled prophecy as mere pious fraud, as vaticinium ex eventu (prophecy
forged after the fulfillment itself). But this cannot possibly explain the great multiplication of the
early Christian Church in the second half of the First Century A.D. In line with this we find in Isa.
49:6 (composed at a time when the mere survival of Mosaic religion was gravely in doubt even
for the Jews themselves) that the promised Servant of the Lord would not only “raise up the
tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved of Israel,” but he would also “Make you a light of the
Gentiles, so that My Salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” No prediction could have
seemed less likely of fulfillment back in Isaiah’s day, yet we see today a worldwide Christian
church established on every continent of Planet Earth. No human insight could ever have
foreseen such an amazing extension of the covenant promises to the national and spiritual
descendants of Abraham. No escape is possible from the conclusion that predictions like this
could never have been successfully made by merely uninspired human authors, whether J or D or
E or P, or even Isaiah I, II, or III.
The description of what our Lord Jesus Christ suffered on the day He was crucified is found in
its most moving and eloquent form in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. The Servant’s characteristics
and experiences as set forth in Isa. 52:1–3:12 cannot be fitted to the career of Hezekiah or Josiah
or the nation Israel—even though such theories have been advanced by those who are desperate
for an alternative to Jesus of Nazareth. Israel was never described as sinless and blameless by
any of Israel’s own prophets. The Servant of the Lord is so described in this chapter. Nor could
Israel have been punished by God in the place of Israel, as Liberals argue today, for this amounts
to a self-contradictory absurdity. You simply cannot explain away Isaiah’s prediction on the
basis of humanism and rationalism as has been pursued by the Liberal establishment. The
attempt to explain away fulfilled prophecy by saying the biblical book itself must have been
written after the fulfillment had taken place can be easily refuted by those prophecies which were
fulfilled after the last line in the Old Testament was written. Therefore we are driven to the
conclusion that only a personal, almighty, covenant-keeping God, sovereign over history, could
have originated such predictions as these and brought them to pass.
We could adduce hundreds of other predictions, many of which must have seemed very unlikely
of fulfillment, but those above mentioned amply suffice to prove the point that the Bible was not
of mere human origin, but rather (as 2 Peter 1:21 puts it) “No prophecy was ever made by an act
of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (NASB). No other
conclusion is possible for any honest investigator whose mind has not been warped by a stubborn
bias which self-defensively repels all contrary evidence. No judge or jury operating according to
the laws of evidence could come to any other conclusion but that there are irrefutable proofs of
divine origin to be found in Scripture which defy all possibility of mere human invention.
It may be argued at this point that while fulfilled predictions made far in advance of their
realization are to be found in Holy Scripture, yet there seem to be numerous discrepancies and
contradictions discoverable in the Bible which could hardly have been inspired by a God of truth.
To this we respond that no error has ever been adduced which can be proven to have arisen in the
autographs (the original manuscripts) of Scripture. There may be a few discrepancies in the
spelling of names or in the citing of statistics which appear even in the earliest of manuscripts
which have come down to us. But with the responsible use of the rules of textual criticism, there
is no unanswerable objection which robs the Bible of inerrancy—when properly exegeted in the
light of what the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek reader would have understood as the
meaning of the sacred authors themselves. (See G. L. Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties, pp. 1–4). This of course presupposes a thorough acquaintance with the vocabulary
and grammar of these three languages, along with a control of the data furnished by comparative
linguistics (Ugaritic, Phoenician, Akkadian, Egyptian) which shed light upon the meaning and
implications of the idioms and connotations that appear in the Scripture text. Over half of the
difficulties found in Scripture are readily solvable by adequate knowledge of the original
languages and of the relevant data from archaeology.
Many of the most discussed difficulties in the Bible are theological, such as the nature of the
Triune God Himself, the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ as the God-Man, and the tensions
between divine predestination and man’s free will. These deep and basic questions are also dealt
with in that volume, although they are not on the agenda of Higher Criticism as such. But just let
me say that after forty years of study and investigation I have encountered no difficulties or
apparent discrepancies which cannot be dealt with satisfactorily by a proper use of the laws of
legal evidence.
Before concluding this chapter I would like to point out the grave consequences of espousing a
theory of non-inerrant Scripture. If indeed there are errors to be found in the Bible record which
still remain after careful, objective exegesis of the text, the only possible recourse would have to
be a judgment passed upon this error that would necessitate a competent critic who is somehow
better informed as to the truth than was the author of Holy Scripture Himself. But as was pointed
out in chapter 2, this results in setting a human judgment over what purports to be the Word of
God. If an error in the autograph can be conclusively proven in one passage, it opens up the
possibility of error in other passages as well. The subjective preference of the modern critic may
intervene at this point, and essentially the Bible is demoted to the status of any other human-
composed book on religions—a combination of truth and error that demands an inerrant critic to
discern between what is wrong and what is right—one who is wiser and better informed than the
original prophet or apostle who composed the book in question. Thus the modern scholar
becomes an arbiter of truth on a superior level to those whom God allegedly inspired. It then
follows that the text of theological truth rests upon the infallibility of the present-day savant. And
unhappily, such savants have been known to disagree with one another, and so there is no
positive certainty possible to know what was really contained in the text or even whether it spoke
the truth. Thus the initial spot of cancer tends to spread throughout the rest of the body, as it
were, and the seeker is ultimately left to his own opinion rather than resting on the certainty of an
objective revelation from God, a God who really cares about man and who has made provision
for him to be saved from his guilty, fallen condition. The end result is apt to be a resignation to
agnosticism which leads to a feeling of personal meaninglessness and despair, similar to that of
H. G. Wells in “The Mind at the End of its Tether” or the final reproach against Nature or the
Universe which came from the pen of Bertrand Russell. The honored savant who has bet his life
on the verity of Liberalism goes out into the night that awaits him, unforgiven and unrepentant,
to face his Maker and a divine judgment which lies beyond the competence of man to alter or to
mitigate.
Before concluding this chapter it would be good to listen to the recent (1990) testimony of Dr.
Eta Linneman who first rose to prominence in the University of Marburg, Germany, as an
accomplished disciple of Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs, Friedrich Gogarten and Gerhard
Ebeling. In other words she had the finest professors in the area of historical-critical theology
that Germany could produce. As a professor of theology and religious education at
Braunschweig Technical University, she was very highly regarded by faculty and student body
wherever she came to speak. But to her dismay she began to notice that she was falling into a
state of profound disillusionment and failed to find any real relief in an alcoholic addiction. But
when she found herself at lowest ebb, she came in contact with a group of women who met
weekly for Bible study and prayer, and who impressed her as believers who really knew and
loved God and who had a meaningful relationship with Him. After listening to the testimony of a
converted Nepalese who had been imprisoned and beaten for turning from Buddha to Christ, she
turned with her whole heart back to the personal faith in which she had been brought up as a girl.
She felt the influence of the Holy Spirit taking over her whole being and surrendered her life to
her Redeemer.
The scientific approach of the rationalist higher critics could not enable her to understand the
Bible better and turned out to be utterly false and debasing. The very foundations of the
Documentary Theory were faulted through antitheistic presuppositions which were nothing more
than an exercise in subjectivism that had nothing to do with true science. The little volume
featuring this story, translated by R. W. Yarbrough, as Historical Criticism of the Bible (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1990), is an amazingly powerful and convincing treatment that every student
should read before surrendering his mind to the fallacies of Wellhausen’s developmental
hypothesis or the vagaries of Formgeschichte.
 Selected Bibliography
Aalders, G. C. A Short Introduction to the Pentateuch. London: Tyndale, 1949.
Adams, J. M. Ancient Records and the Bible. Nashville: Broadman, 1946.
Aharoni, Yohanan. The Land of the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967.
Albright, W. F. The Archaeology of Palestine. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Pelican,
1960.
---------. From the Stone Age to Christianity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1957.
Alleman, H. C., and Frack, E. E., eds. Old Testament Commentary. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg,
1948.
Allis, O. T. The Five Books of Moses. Philadelphia: Presb. & Reformed, 1943.
---------. Unity of Isaiah. Philadelphia: Presb. & Ref., 1950.
Archer, G. L. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.
Barton, G. A. Archaeology and the Bible. 7th ed. Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union,
1941.
Barton, John. Reading the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984.
Bentzen, Aage. Introduction to the Old Testament. 2 vols. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1949.
Biblical Archaeology Today (Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical
Archaeology). Israel Exploration Society, 1984.
Bimson, J. J. Redating the Exodus and Conquest. JSOT. Sheffield: Almond, 1978.
Bright, J. M. History of Israel. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959.
Brown, Driver and Briggs, eds English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907.
Brown, Raymond D. Recent Discoveries and the Biblical Word. Wilmington, Del.: Michael
Glazier, 1983.
Burrows, Millar. The Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking, 1955.
---------. More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking, 1958.
Cassuto, Umberto. The Documentary Hypothesis. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961.
Childs, Brevard. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, vol 2. Philadelphia: Fortress,
1979.
---------. The Book of Exodus. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974.
Clark, R. E. D. Darwin Before and After. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958.
Cross, F. M. The Ancient Library of Qumran. New York: Doubleday, Anchor, 1961.
Cross, F. M. and Talman, S. Qumran and the History of the Biblical Text. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard U. Press, 1975.
DeVaux, Roland. Ancient Israel. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.
Dowley, Tim, ed. Discovering the Bible. Grand Rapids: Marshall Pickering/Eerdmans, 1986.
Driver, S. R. Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. New York: Scribner, 1891.
Eissfeldt, O. The Old Testament, an Introduction. Translated by Ackroyd. New York: Harper,
1965.
Erman, Adolf, and Grapow, Herman. Worterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache. Berlin, 1955.
Finegan, Jack. Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1964.
---------. Light from the Ancient Past. 2d. ed. Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1959.
Flack, E. E., and Metzger, B. M. The Text, Canon and Principal Versions of the Bible. Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1956.
Free, Joseph P. Archaeology and Bible History. Wheaton: Scripture, 1956.
Garstang, J., and J. B. E. The Story of Jericho. Rev. ed. London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott,
1948.
Hahn, H. F. The Old Testament and Modern Research. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1954.
Harris, R. L. The Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957.
Harrison, R. K. Old Testament Introduction. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.
---------. Old Testament Times. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.
---------. Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969.
Harrison, R. K.; Waltke, B. K.; Guthrie, D.; and Fee, G. D. Biblical Criticism: Historical,
Literary, and Textual. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978.
Hayes, W. C. The Scepter of f Egypt: A background for the study of the Egyptian. New York:
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1
Gleason Leonard Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 3rd. ed.]. (Chicago: Moody Press,
1998), 7–585.